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Breast cancer not just worry for women
Published October 28, 2007
GUADALUPE COUNTY — Martha Jones was always looking out for her little brother.
“I raised him after our mother died,” said Jones, a Seguin resident. “Willis lived in Gonzales with our dad, but my husband and I would pick him up on weekends and bring him here. When Dad died, four of my brothers came to live with us.”
Jones and Willis Richter came from a family of 12 children, but their lives always seemed to intersect. He came to stay with Jones again after divorcing his first wife, and it was through his sister that Richter met his second wife.
Years later, Jones watched her brother, a McQueeney resident, embark on a familiar path when he was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years ago, but I’m clear now,” Jones said. “When I heard about Willis, I told him I wouldn’t let him give up.”
Richter’s wife, Willo Mae, said the first signs of trouble appeared in the summer of 2004.
“He’d always said that if something was wrong, he’d rather not know about it,” Willo Mae recalled.
Willis, former maintenance supervisor for Lake McQueeney Estates, was just recovering from a back injury that put him out of work for two years. He had recently started his own contracting company and did not have health insurance when family members noticed swelling in his right breast.
“I kept telling him that I’d seen things like that on TV and he needed to see a doctor about it, but he’d just say ‘You watch too much TV,’” Willo Mae said. “If he’d gone then, he’d probably still be here now.”
Willo Mae was still recovering from the death of her first husband when she met Willis in 1977.
As a young widow working two jobs to support her three children, Willo Mae said romance was far from her mind when their paths crossed at the Kingsbury Volunteer Fire Department’s annual barbecue.
“I was sitting talking to Martha and her husband when Willis walked up,” she recalled. “He didn’t say a word, just led me out onto the dance floor. He didn’t even know if I could dance or not.”
Luckily, Willo Mae had no trouble keeping up on the dance floor. The pair and their friends moved the party to El Fiesta after the barbecue and Willis and Willo Mae shared a few more dances.
“He said, ‘You sure can dance. Give me a call sometime if you ever want to go dancing,’” Willo Mae recalled. “And I said, ‘Doesn’t your finger fit the hole in the telephone dial? You call me if you want to go dancing.’ Three months later we were married.”
The two blended their families — he had one daughter and she had a daughter and two sons — with an Oct. 14 ceremony. First United Methodist Church was decorated with marigolds and daisies for the occasion.
“I remember before the wedding, Martha told me, ‘Life will never be dull, but if you want a handyman, get you one,” Willo Mae said with a chuckle.
Though Willis was 15 years her junior, Willo Mae said that they always believed the age difference didn’t matter as long as they were happy.
“He did make me happy,” she said. “He died only a few months from our 29th anniversary.”
During their marriage, the Richters dealt with their share of tragedies. An accident claimed the life of Willo Mae’s oldest son, Thomas, and Willis lost three brothers and two sisters to illness and injury.
Jones said she and Willis come from a family cursed by cancer: their mother had liver cancer, and other brothers suffered from brain tumors, lung cancer and bladder cancer.
“It’s just handed down like a death sentence in our family,” she said. “I worry about it all the time.”
But, just as Jones had beat breast cancer, she was certain her brother could overcome the disease. As soon as she heard Willis’ diagnosis, she recommended that he see the oncologist who treated her during her bout with breast cancer. Jones was fortunate to catch the disease early and, though she had a mastectomy to remove the tumor near her chest wall, the cancer has not returned.
Jones said Dr. Sharon Wilks, at the Cancer Care Center of South Texas, did the best she could to save Willis, however, by the time he came to her office, the cancer had spread to his backbone.
Wilks recommended several weeks of radiation to shrink the tumors, and Jones drove her brother to San Antonio every day for his treatments.
“They kept telling me that I didn’t have to do this,” Jones said. “But I had told them from the beginning that we would see him through it.”
She said that Wilks positive attitude helped keep them going, adding that the oncologist never let Willis believe he was defeated.
“She worked with him so hard, all she wanted to do was make him well,” Jones said, fighting back tears.
Wilks said she sees a couple hundred regular breast cancer patients in her San Antonio-based clinic, but only four or five of them are men.
“It’s a very rare disease in men, right now it only effects about 1 percent of the male population,” she said. “Usually breast tumors in men are very responsive to hormone treatment, and many times they don’t even require chemotherapy.”
Wilks said men who have a family history of breast cancer — including cases in female relatives — are at higher risk of contracting it themselves.
Some however, have no obvious risk factors.
Greg Lehmann, a Geronimo resident, said none of his blood relatives have had any kind of cancer. However, he was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003.
“I started to have this burning feeling in this breast,” he said, pointing to his right side. “Whenever I was working and something would bump it, it would start burning — sometimes for a minute and sometimes for half an hour.”
Lehmann’s wife, Annette, said she urged him to go to the doctor, especially after they noticed that his right nipple was inverted.
“Breast cancer is not something that you think about men getting,” she said. “But when I saw that it was inverted, I told him that, in a woman, that’s a really bad thing.”
Greg and his doctor found a small lump under his right nipple. He underwent a battery of tests at Guadalupe Regional Medical Center before a biopsy found that the lump was a cancerous tumor, which would have to be removed.
“I remember when they did the biopsy,” Annette recalled. “The doctor came out and said that it was positive for cancer and I cried.”
Greg, however, said he was able to look on the light side.
“They told me they would have to take out all the breast tissue on that side and I would lose my nipple,” he said. “I told them, ‘Hey, it’s not like I had any use for that thing.’”
After the mastectomy, doctors took samples from Greg’s lymph nodes to make sure the disease had not progressed.
“After the surgery we went back to have my blood tested and it was all normal,” he said. “I’ve gone back and gotten mammograms on the other side and they had me on some medication for awhile.”
For the last four years, Greg has been cancer-free.
Willis, however, was not so fortunate.
Willo Mae said that he recovered well from radiation, but it wasn’t enough to kill the cancer.
“I was so happy that he was up and about, but we went back a few months later for a checkup and his blood count was not good,” Willo Mae said. “He needed to start chemo again and the second time did him in.”
Though the difficult radiation and chemotherapy treatments caused significant bone deterioration, Willis kept a positive attitude until the final weeks. Wilks said she remembers his case as being especially difficult, as Willis’ cancer didn’t respond to hormone therapy and seemed to be progressing very quickly.
“I remember he had a lot of nausea with the chemotherapy, too.”
Willo Mae said the last straw came when he was in the hospital getting intravenous feeding, because the nausea kept him from eating normally. She said her husband overheard a nurse tell her that fighting his cancer was pointless and that he wasn’t going to recover.
“That’s when he started to give up, I think,” she said. “He didn’t want to go back to the hospital.”
Unable to eat, Willis continued to lose strength and was soon unable to walk to his bedroom at night. Willis resisted using the hospital bed, set up in his living room, until he was too weak to protest. In the end, family members and friends gathered around the bed to say their good-byes.
Martha said she can clearly remember the last words her brother spoke to her, four days before he died.
“On Sunday I went to visit and asked if I could get him anything. He said, ‘Bring me a six-pack from the store,’ and I said, ‘You and I will both be sick if I bring you a six pack,” she said, laughing through her tears. “Those were the last words he said to me. When they put him in the hospital bed, he never said another word and then they called Hospice to come out.”
On July 27, 2006, Willis died at the age of 53.
“The Hospice people had asked if everyone who needed to had come to say their good-byes and I said ‘I’m not saying ‘good-bye,’” Martha recalled softly. “I wasn’t going to give him up, I didn’t want him to die.”
Willo Mae said she was the first to discover her husband’s death, when she came into the room and saw that his frail chest was no longer moving with each breath.
“I think what helped me was to remember how in his final days he would say ‘God just come and take me, I’m so tired of hurting,’” she said. “God knew what was best. He’d hurt as long as he could.”
Willo Mae said that she hadn’t had a mammogram until she was 65. She said she’ll always wonder if a better knowledge of breast cancer warning signs might have helped save her husband.
“The swelling and the crustiness he used to get around his nipple, I knew they weren’t good but I didn’t realize that those were warning signs,” she said. “I never got a mammogram because a friend of mine told me that they hurt really bad. I know now that they don’t really hurt, and I can’t believe that kept me from being checked all those years.”
Both Willo Mae and Jones have been spreading the word among family and friends, urging them to do regular self-exams, get annual mammograms and never let mysterious symptoms go unchecked.
“People think there’s nothing they can do, but it’s so much better if you catch it early,” Jones said. “There’s help out there, get screened.”
Though women’s plight against breast cancer has received plenty of publicity in the last few years, Willo Mae said some organizations are surprisingly unsympathetic toward men with the disease.
“Because we didn’t have insurance, Martha and I spent hours calling all kinds of organizations to see if they could help with treatments or medication. Some of them said, ‘We don’t help men,’” she said. “Even now, I wear the pink ribbon pin all the time and a “Survivor” shirt and people always ask if I had breast cancer. I just say ‘No, my husband did,’ and they look at me like I’m crazy.”
Wilks said that annual mammograms aren’t necessary for men, unless they have breast abnormalities. However, she and Willo Mae agreed that a general awareness of personal health is vital to preventing any kind of cancer.
Willo Mae said that even her husband, known to be stubborn about doctors, had a change of heart before his death.
“He always said, “If I have it, I don’t want to know about it,’ but after he was diagnosed, he was always on his soapbox with anyone who seemed to have the same attitude, especially men,” she recalled. “He’d say, ‘Go to the doctor, don’t let it go like I did.’”
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