Being diagnosed with breast cancer at the beginning of the COVID pandemic had its good points and not-so-good points for Melissa Olsen.
In 2020, Olsen, who was 61 and living in Richmond, Va., found out she had cancer in March of that year after a routine mammogram. She underwent a mastectomy the following month.
“Just as the world was getting ready to fall apart, I had surgery,” recalled Olsen, who moved to Hilton Head Island, S.C. in 2021 and did her follow-up treatment at the Nancy N. and J.C. Lewis Cancer & Research Pavilion in Bluffton.
While in Richmond, because of COVID, she had to be dropped off at the door of the hospital, and no one could be with her after the surgery. Additionally, the hospital was short-staffed, and one nurse had to cover
patients on three floors, she said.
“I was freaking out at times,” she said. “I was more afraid of COVID than breast cancer.”
One positive part of her diagnosis was that it was caught early, she said.
“It was maybe stage 1 and a grade 3 mass, which meant everything was ready to explode,” she explained. “I was so fortunate that I went in for a mammogram when I did, because if I had waited it probably would have been different (because of COVID slowing down appointments).”
Olsen also opted for a unilateral mastectomy rather than a bilaterial procedure.
“I thought about both, but the surgeon didn’t think that was necessary,” she said. “If I had had my heart set on having a double mastectomy that would have been another level of frustration because elective surgeries were cancelled (due to COVID),” she said.
Also contributing to her decision about having a unilateral mastectomy were two valid points: no family history of breast cancer and testing negative for the BRCA gene, Olsen said.
After surgery, she had 12 weeks of chemotherapy, during which she had to wear a mask. “On the positive side, by then everyone was wearing masks,” she said. “That’s how I spent my COVID vacation.”
She then took a year-long regimen of Herceptin, which is a drug used to treat breast cancer.
Looking back to the day she received the phone call about the mammogram showing a mass in her breast, Olsen said she wasn’t upset when she was asked to return for a closer look.
“If they had said tumor, I might have been panicky,” she recalled. “But they wanted me to come back in, and I had to do the same thing 10 years before. Fortunately, that time was ok.”
After that return visit in 2020 she was concerned when she was told that the mass was cancerous but grateful that it was caught early, she said.
Moving to Hilton Head so soon after her surgery was scary “to leave what you know. But I felt so comfortable with my care (at the Lewis pavilion),” she said. “I haven’t missed a beat.”
Six years after her diagnosis, Olsen remains cancer free and is enjoying time spent with her daughter’s family on Hilton Head.
“I am diligent about follow-ups and preventive care,” she explained. “Besides, God doesn’t take you any second before He needs to.”
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Melissa Olsen faced breast cancer during the pandemic
