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Feature Stories

Patty Laakso

by Michael Corey

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Sitting in a sandwich shop just days after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, Patty Laakso, a 12-year survivor, candidly remembers the first haunting moments of her life as a cancer patient. "Cancer is probably the worst word anybody ever wants to hear," she says. "When you hear the word cancer you automatically assume your days are numbered and you're not going to live very long. Even though my surgeon told me that I had a 90 percent chance with chemo on surviving a very long time…you just don't understand because it's so scary, I mean it is the most scary word that you'll hear in a lifetime. That's why I believe it's so important for a survivor to speak with people that have been diagnosed."

And that's just what Laakso has done. She believes it is her responsibility to tell her story of early detection and survival to whomever will listen.

"You have to do the self-breast exam," she explains. "And you have to go to the doctor and have him do the breast exam. And so for that reason, I just love to go and talk to people and tell them my story, because my mammogram told me I was fine--and I wasn't. And it told me I was fine for three years. I even had an ultrasound that said I was fine."

Indeed, Laakso's story of detection is more troubling than most.

At the age of 49, Laakso had her first mammogram. A suspicious mammographer called her with a request: to come in for a second test. But after that second mammogram, she was told to simply come back in a year.

12 months later, Laakso's OBGYN felt a lump in her breast. He encouraged her to visit a surgical oncologist and to have an ultrasound in addition to having her annual mammogram.

But the mammogram and ultrasound were deemed satisfactory, and Laakso was told in writing to return in a year. The surgical oncologist went so far as to perform a needle aspiration in her breast, but the results were negative.

Her OBGYN was dumbfounded. "'I don't know what to tell you,'" Laakso remembers him saying. "He knew I had a problem, but he couldn't prove
it."

But Laakso had been cleared of cancer, lifting a tremendous onus from her shoulders. And so she carried on until she saw one of her OBGYN's
nurses in church six months later. She convinced Laakso to return to the surgical oncologist.

"There were two tumors--both of them malignant," she recalls. Six months previously, the tumors went undetected because the needle went right
in between the pair of growths.

On March 30, 1993, her oncologist performed a successful mastectomy.

"I celebrate that just like a birthday," she says.

Chemotherapy followed the procedure, four treatments set three weeks apart.

"I lost my hair in 10 days," Laakso says. "I'll tell you that it's a lot worse losing your hair than it is losing a breast. Nobody would ever know that I don't have them today, you just don't know that. But your hair is your crowning glory."

"When you look in the mirror and see the ugliest scar you'll ever see in a lifetime, and a bald head, that is emotional, I mean it really is," she continues. "I had no problem letting my husband seeing my scar. And he's never had a problem with me not having my breasts, but I never wanted him to see me with a bald head. Isn't that strange? That's how horrible it was to me. So I wore a stocking cap to bed. I wore a wig all day and a stocking cap."

At her treatment's conclusion in July 1993, she and her husband went to Chicago to celebrate. They took in a baseball game, enjoyed a bevy of delectable restaurants and did a little shopping, too with a freedom not enjoyed since their wedding in 1968.

And now, Laakso uses her life so others may enjoy that freedom, too.

"Breast cancer wasn't as well known as it is today," she says. "Komen has been very responsible in getting the word out about self-examinations, breast cancer awareness…and I believe that's how I found the Komen organization, so I could help others that might be as bull-headed as me."

"I'm going to spend the rest of my life--as long as I'm able--spreading the word of awareness and breast self examination and the clinical exams and the mammography--you can't have just one and not the others, they're all so important."