Trisha Rehagen of Westphalia is one tough lady. At 38, Trisha found a lump in her left breast while she was doing a self-breast exam. She immediately called the doctor and went in for an appointment Oct. 1, 2019. A week later, she got the phone call that changed her life.
“When they call, and I cannot believe that they do this, they just say, ‘by the way you have cancer,’” her husband, Jim Rehagen said. “They don’t say come in and let’s talk about it. It’s just you have cancer … click.”
“It was quite the shock,” Trisha remembers. “Don’t get me wrong I cried and who wouldn’t? Then I told my kids that night and we were all bawling.”
“It is a life-changing event,” Jim said.
“Jim and I decided at the beginning that we would deal with it one day at a time,” Trisha said. “I’m not going to stop everyone’s life for it, and I don’t want everyone to feel sorry for me.”
After the shock of the diagnosis, Trisha went to countless doctor appointments. There were ultrasounds and a mammogram, numerous biopsies, and lots of different doctors and tests. Trisha chose to go to Ellis Fischel Cancer Center in Columbia for treatment even though her initial diagnosis was made by the Jefferson City Medical Group (JCMG).
“Ellis Fischel has been awesome,” Trisha said with a big smile. “They’ve been excellent for me and the people are so nice.”
But what the doctors found was not good news. Although the cancer was just in one breast, it had spread to the lymph nodes on her neck and it was an aggressive cancer. The doctors suggested that Trisha have chemotherapy treatments first.
“Most of the time they remove the breasts first and then do chemotherapy but with me they were afraid that if they opened me up it was going to spread all over my body,” Trisha said.
Trisha started chemotherapy the week before Thanksgiving last year. Her first round of chemo was with a type called “the Red Devil.” Trisha had to go in every two weeks for treatments. Before they administered chemo, they would give her a bag of steroids. The “Red Devil” is named for the fact that it is a red color as it goes into your veins. Trisha remembers sucking on popsicles and ice chips as she got her treatments to try to avoid getting sores in her mouth which is a common side effect of this type of chemotherapy.
“I was really lucky,” Trisha said. “I just got a couple of sores in my mouth.”
Reality hit for the family when her hair started falling out.
“I have always had long hair,” Trisha said as she showed me an old picture of herself. “One day when I was taking a shower, I could feel (my hair) coming out. I clogged the drain like three times. I got out of the shower and I told my husband to shave it off.”
Jim shaved off her long hair and it was not just Trisha that had trouble dealing with it. Their youngest son, Chase, was only eight years old and he could not even look at his mom for three or four days.
“He’s gotten used to it now, but it was a shock for him,” Trisha said.
“It was a shock for everyone,” Jim added.
After “the Red Devil,” treatment, Trisha had another 12 weeks of different types of chemotherapy to endure. She would get two to three different kinds of chemo and a round of steroids before every treatment. Trisha scheduled her treatments on Thursdays so that she would have the weekends to recover.
The first couple of days after a treatment she could not sleep because of the steroids so by Sunday she was exhausted. The doctors felt like she was reacting well to the treatments although the steroids had the unwelcome side effect of helping Trisha put on an extra 40 pounds.
Weight gain was not something that Trisha was expecting. She even thought she might lose a couple of pounds with the cancer. But the doctors told her the more weight she could gain the healthier she was to fight the cancer. Trisha took the doctor’s advice and decided to worry about the weight gain later.
“Ice cream, chocolate, you name it I was eating it,” Trisha said. “I was hungry all the time, so I ate all the time.”
By May 2020 Trisha was done with the chemotherapy and was ready for surgery to remove both breasts. Although Trisha was given the option to only remove the one breast that was shown to have cancer, she took the advice of her surgeon and had both breasts removed along with 10 lymph nodes.
“They called me the day after surgery to tell me that the test results came back and the cancer was gone,” Trisha said. “The chemo did its job.”
Four days after this initial surgery, Trisha had to have an additional surgery to put a drain tube back in that had fallen out. Even after this second surgery, Trisha was draining a lot of excess fluid, sometimes having to go in twice a week to have fluid drained off the one side. The surgeons could not figure out what the problem was so Trisha went into surgery a third time. But even this did not help and after several weeks, the surgeon saw signs of infection on her left side. Trisha was in surgery again. This time the surgeon removed the expander that was used to stretch out the skin to prepare it for the breast implant.
The COVID-19 pandemic complicated things for the Rehagen’s because Trisha had to go through all her surgeries alone since patients were not allowed to have anyone with them at the hospital.
“I couldn’t come in to a single one,” Jim said. “I’d just drop her off at the front door.”
Trisha started radiation treatment soon thereafter. Trisha is currently taking radiation treatments every day, except Saturday and Sunday. She is taking the radiation treatments at the Goldschmidt Cancer Center in Jefferson City to save herself driving time. So far, Trisha has been doing well with the radiation treatments.
“I’ve noticed I’m a little tired and my skin is starting to get a little red,” she said pointing to her neck and chest.
Tricia is dealing with other treatments and side effects as well. Since her cancer feeds off of the estrogen in her body, she has to go in every three months to get a shot in her stomach that chemically puts her into menopause, giving her all of the side effects of menopause, including hot flashes. There could very well be a hysterectomy in her future. She treats her skin with special salves and lotions to try to counter the effects of the radiation. The medicine she is on is impacting her bones so she takes pills to counteract that and is scheduled for a bone density scan in the coming weeks.
Trisha admits that her daughter has done a lot to keep her going.
“Without her I probably couldn’t keep going,” Trisha said. “My oldest has helped out a lot too. I mean my kids have been there for me the whole time.”
Trisha admits that it has taken a toll on her family.
“Jim keeps a lot of it inside,” Trisha said. “We’ve been married 18 years and we do good together, but it is hard on the kids. They are seeing their mom go through this and I’m someone who has taken care of them their whole life and now they are trying to take care of me.”
When asked how they are getting through all this their answer is simple.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Jim said.
They may not have had a choice when it came to getting cancer, but they made a choice to have a good attitude about how to deal with it.
“I’m not one to sit and cry,” Trisha said. “I am a worker; I always have been. I do not want to dwell on it. I just go through it day by day. I’m not going to let it get me down.”
Trisha and Jim are more than ready for things to get back to normal. After Trisha is done with her radiation treatments and has a good bone scan, she will begin talking to the surgeon about reconstruction surgery. Like every part of her cancer story, it is complicated. Since her body would not accept the expander on the left side, she will not be able to get a traditional breast implant because they are made of the same material. Her other option is to have fat sucked out of her stomach, buttocks, and legs and have it formed into her breast on the left side.
Trisha worries that things will not go well with the reconstruction surgery. The surgery can take up to 12 hours.
“What if they can’t fix me?” Trisha asked, pointing to her missing breasts.
Trisha worries about her daughter since she has a family history of breast cancer on her dad’s side.
“I think about her all the time,” Tricia said. “I don’t want her to go through what I went through.”
Tricia has this advice for all women, regardless of their age: “Breast cancer can happen at any age,” she said. “Check yourself regularly and if you feel any kind of lump get it checked out.”
Trisha has talked openly about having breast cancer since the day of her diagnosis.
“I think the more you talk about it the better it makes you feel,” Tricia said. “You’re not keeping it all balled up inside and maybe you can help someone else deal with it.”
Her philosophy on fighting breast cancer is one that you can apply to anything in life.
“Your attitude is everything,” Trisha said. “If you don’t have a positive attitude about everything going forward it’s just going to drag you down.”