Pam’s Story 
 

As told by her father, Lawrence Greenaway

I'll never forget the day we found out our daughter Pam had breast cancer. It was January 1988. She and her husband Guy showed up at the back door of our house. Pam's face couldn't have been whiter and Guy looked terrified too. My wife Kay and I immediately asked what was wrong and they told us they had just come from the doctor and that Pam had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

She had recently given birth to her second child, a little girl named Mallory. Her son Jamie was only four years old. Pam herself was only 34. How could Pam, a glowing, proud young mother, have breast cancer?

Breast cancer came as a shock to our family and not just because Pam's age. Kay and I grew up in a day and age when public information on breast cancer was practically non-existent. No one ever spoke the word "breast" because of the sexual overtones, so no one spoke about "breast cancer" either. We had literally never even really heard of it. In our total family structure over many generations, there hadn't been a single woman that we knew of that had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Kay and I both had mothers and grandmothers that had enjoyed long lives. It had seemingly never affected our family. However, we did later discover that Pam's maternal great-aunt had breast cancer. Her diagnosis had been a well-kept secret though, probably due to society's covert rules on what a person disclosed about their medical history and also how such a disease would appear to the neighbours. Believe it or not, it wasn't that long ago that cancer was considered by many to be a disease that could be transmitted through living in the same household or by wearing clothes of the patient. These things simply weren't talked about and it left people ignorant.

Boy, it was one hell of a quick education for all of us. Continue reading>>