Photography By: Donovan Roberts Witmer
“Paying it forward.”
That’s how three Susquehanna-region breast cancer survivors describe the journey that has taken them beyond their time as patients and into new lives of advocacy and community service. Attorney Kim R. Smith helped create a new model of cancer care in Lancaster. York-area nurse Stacy Riggs founded a support group for young breast cancer patients. Harrisburg radio personality Nancy Ryan puts her life on the air, inspiring others and drawing inspiration in return.
Kim R. Smith
Lancaster
The first time Kim Smith walked into a cancer treatment appointment, “right there with the patients,” was the only time she felt fear. “It really hit,” she recalls, “that I had cancer.”
Two years later, a sneak peek at the wall of living greenery in the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute’s serene and soaring foyer made her cry.
“What a difference from the time it just smacks you in the face, and then you come into this facility and it’s just so calming,” she says now. “So calming.”
Smith is a partner with Hartman Underhill & Brubaker LLC who delved into community service, leading business and legal institutions, since arriving in Lancaster from her native Ohio in 1987. For the descendant of county commissioners and school board members, service “is just in the DNA.”
Smith’s community service took a personal turn in 2008, when a routine mammogram revealed a small but aggressive lump. She found excellent care from Lancaster providers, but like all cancer patients at the time she endured the appointment runaround, the trips from radiation to chemo and even hyperbaric treatments in York.
With the idea for Lancaster General Health’s (www.lancastergeneralhealth.org) Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute already germinating, Smith joined an advisory panel of patients probed for ideas on improving the cancer-treatment experience. Then she was asked to participate in the capital campaign—a drive that raised $25 million. The generous people of Lancaster, she says, “want to provide something back to the community that is of a healing nature.”
Smith shares her thoughts from inside the Barshinger Cancer Institute lobby, a marvel of glass and tile, the entranceway to private treatment spaces, family consultation rooms, a healing garden, a salon-like “image recovery center” and curated artworks. Entire teams of oncologists, radiologists, nurses, chaplains and counselors communicate on treatment and recovery plans.
One patient, Smith was told, arrived for six appointments that day.
“When you think of a patient who was able to accomplish six different appointments in one facility in one day, that’s transformative,” she says. “You have the confidence of knowing that the oncologist was talking to her other five providers.”
Dr. Randall A. Oyer, Lancaster General Health’s medical director for oncology, was Smith’s oncologist. The Barshinger Cancer Institute model integrates cancer care under one roof, which “improves patient satisfaction, improves access and decreases stress and the time involved in accessing treatment.”
As for Smith’s role in developing the institute, Oyer “can’t imagine a better spokesperson,” with both her business acumen and her experience as a patient. “I smile when I think about Kim,” he says.
The institute’s green wall—literally, a wall of real greenery behind the reception desk—represents the facility’s mission, Smith says. “I see it, and there’s hope. It’s green. It’s vibrant. It’s living. There’s something healing and living here. It’s all done by design.”
Stacy Riggs
York
After she shaved her head, Stacy Riggs got a wig but didn’t wear it. In public, she noticed three distinct reactions. Some people would blatantly stare. Others would “avoid eye contact at all costs.” The third group—they were cancer survivors who would approach and share their stories.
“I miss that, now that I have hair,” she recalls
Riggs talks about her experience as a journey, one that began in April 2012. She was only 35, with no family history of breast cancer. But one night, she felt a mass in her breast. As a nurse, now at the WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital (www.wellspan.org), she knows her way around the health-care system, so within a week, she had the diagnosis: Triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form with a higher likelihood of recurrence.
Through chemo, radiation and lumpectomies, Riggs’ medical background helped her cope.
“In working with cancer patients, I know that having a positive attitude is very important,” she says. “Now I use it in life in general.”
Riggs marvels at the support network that coalesced around her. She never went to chemo alone, always joined by her mother and a friend. A restaurateur friend held a fundraiser to help pay the bills. The party for shaving her shoulder-length red hair—for a brief moment in her life, Riggs had Baltimore Ravens numbers shaved on her head—got so raucous that some friends “slept like babies that night because they hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time.”
Throughout the experience, Riggs wrestled with the typical challenges of a young, professional woman. She had a mortgage and car payments. The support of her employers “was amazing,” but as an oncology nurse, she had known patients who lost their jobs during treatment. Before diagnosis, she had separated from her husband and was trying to work things out. After diagnosis, she decided to end the marriage.
“My goals were about focusing on me, focusing on family and friends, people that bring positive energy into my life, people that want to make me a better person, and I want to make them a better person,” she says now.
A Seattle conference for young breast cancer patients and survivors opened her eyes to their shared experiences—the fears of scarring, the impact of mastectomies on dating and sexuality, raising kids, holding down jobs.
Back home in York, Riggs worked with two others, Susan Bowman and Amy Milsten, to research and rally support through WellSpan for a new resource—a support group for breast cancer patients aged 45 and under. The group meets for the first time this fall (email F2F2013@yahoo.com for more information).
Riggs devotes much of her free time to the support group, calling it a kind of paying forward for all the help she received. In the name of advocacy, she has done things she never thought she’d do—giving speeches, modeling bathing suits for a friend’s cancer boutique, getting a tattoo.
The tattoo on her wrist says, “Believe.”
“It’s been a big word for me throughout my journey,” she says. “For different women, there are different words. Hope. Believe. Survivor. For me, it’s believing in myself and believing that anything’s possible. I didn’t believe it before, but now I believe.”
Note: Before publication, “Susquehanna Style” learned that Stacy Riggs was again diagnosed with breast cancer. “Round number two,” she says, including single mastectomy. She is doing well and believes that her journey continues. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says. “Not sure what the future holds, but I’m sure the answers and reasons will come forward in time.”
Nancy Ryan
Harrisburg
During her chemo, Nancy Ryan met a woman who was crying, distressed over her third cancer diagnosis in less than two years. Ryan struck up a conversation, trying to cheer her up. She asked the woman what kind of music she liked. Country, the woman said.
“My name’s Nancy,” Ryan responded, “and I work with a guy named Newman.
The woman was shocked—meeting half of the “Nancy & Newman” morning team from Bob 94.9, Harrisburg’s country music station.
“She was laughing and crying, and I thought, ‘There’s a reason for everything,’” Ryan recalls, sitting in the cheery studio she shares with her on-air partner. “It took her mind off being so miserable about her situation. I guess you try to pay it forward after something like this.”
The day she and Newman told listeners about her condition, Ryan said, “I gotta put this out there because I’ve lived my life on the radio. Everything’s okay, but I do have breast cancer.”
That life on the radio—a career she has pursued since age 16—has been something of a lifeline for Ryan through her cancer treatment, which started after she found a lump the day before Thanksgiving 2010. She had been doing on-air promotions for Oakwood Breast Care Center (www.theoakwoodcenter.org) for several months, so she knew where to go for trusted care.
Ryan missed only eight days on the air, recovering from surgery. During chemo, Newman—an enduring supporter during treatment—tried to keep her off the air when she wasn’t feeling well, but Ryan “didn’t want to go around boo-hooing,” figuring she could just as easily not feel well at work as at home.
“I tried to be a role model because I had people tell me I was. All of a sudden, you feel like you’ve got to be stronger.”
Ryan’s husband, Brad, was her rock, but she chose her words carefully when explaining her illness to daughter Hannasy, then 9 years old. “You don’t want to scare a kid. You just want them to know that you’re going to be okay. I told her the doctors took out the cancer, took out all the bad stuff. She’s really good with it.”
Because everything happens for a reason, Ryan believes that her treatments were tolerable so she could help others. She fights back tears as she recalls listeners who have been ill or kept vigil at a dying parent’s bedside and then tell her, “You guys were the only friends I had.” She has reminded Newman, “You don’t know how we help people just by making them laugh.”
These days, Ryan abides by the advice of her doctor, who said, “Just go live your life. Don’t worry about getting cancer again. Let me worry about that.”
Her philosophy these days: “Life’s too short to drink crappy wine.”
“Definitely, that’s what I got out of it,” she says. “If the wine’s not good, open up another bottle. Hey, you work hard. Enjoy life. That’s me.”
