By Eric Cravey, Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT, W.Va. — At the age of 72, Suze Dempsey could be found on the pickleball court, kayaking or helping her three siblings with day-to-day tasks. However, in July 2023, that all changed after she felt a lump in one of her breasts.
“I thought, ‘I’ll wait a couple days,’ because it could have been an inflamed cyst or something,” Dempsey said, who is now 73. “And I don’t know, something just kept saying, ‘this one is different.’”
Six days later, she had a mammogram and, after the procedure, she was asked to stay for an ultrasound.
“That was a red flag,” Dempsey said. “And I said ‘yes,’ and it turned out it was cancer, and it had already gone to one lymph node, so it was very aggressive cancer, and by the time I met with the doctor for the first diagnosis, they said, ‘Well, we’ve caught it early.’”
She was at the bottom of stage 2, “maybe the top of stage 3” of hormone receptor-positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative breast cancer, which the Mayo Clinic says, accounts for 60–70% of all breast cancer cases.
Dempsey said her first thought was to have a radical mastectomy to remove both breasts, but her physicians thought otherwise.
“They said it’s much more invasive and if we can kill the tumor and you can just have a lumpectomy, the recovery is so much easier,” she said.
And through each step, Dempsey kept a positive attitude. She said there was not time for a “pity party.”
