95-year-old mother encouraged to tell story of breast cancer diagnosis to 'help just one person'
Peggy Lynah was six weeks pregnant in 1965 when she discovered a lump in her left breast.
She also had four children aged 4 to 15.
“I’ve never talked about this because it’s very private,” said Peggy, 95. "But she (pointing to daughter Ruthie Lynah Whitlow) thinks it might help just one person.”
The baby Peggy was carrying was Ruthie who considers what her mother experienced and how she handled it, “an amazing miracle.”
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All those years ago when Peggy found the lump she called Dr. Julian Quattlebaum, who was a family friend and a surgeon. “I was feeling horrible and had absolutely no energy. He told me to meet him at the Oglethorpe Sanitorium the next morning and he would do a biopsy.”
The next day, Peggy did as Dr. Quattlebaum instructed. “When I woke up (in the hospital) the next morning my left breast was gone.” She had no say-so about options, but she trusted Dr. Quattlebaum’s judgment. “He assured me from the get-go that everything would be OK.”
But all was not alright one day when four or five doctors appeared in her room and gave her a lecture about how should abort her baby, she said.
“It was very, very unsettling,” she said. “When they left, I called my uncle who was a doctor. You can bet those doctors didn’t come back to my room.”
Peggy never worried about something happening to the baby or the cancer spreading, although the day after Ruthie was born, it was recommended that she have her ovaries removed. “I had confidence in Dr. Quattlebaum and believed it when he told me that God would get me through it all,” she said.
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Coming home to a houseful of children and a new baby wasn’t easy, but Peggy managed with the support of family and good friends. “My friends were great,” she recalled. “They helped me so much.”
Follow-up treatments weren’t necessary, and reconstruction and physical therapy were non-existent. Regaining the strength in her left arm took work. She had a pulley rigged up to her shower curtain rod and, every day she would pull on it to exercise her weak arm. Evidently, the do-it-yourself system worked because, when Ruthie was older, Peggy worked outside the home, played golf and resumed a normal life. She even reeled in a huge sailfish while boating.
A healthy sense of humor also was a saving grace for Peggy. She never had a pity party and more than once poked fun at her situation. For example, instead of a prosthesis, she had a bubble-like bag that she blew up and put in her bra. Once at a party she looked down and the bubble had deflated. Peggy didn’t miss a beat. She simply said, “Oops, I’ve got a flat.”
Her miracle “was truly mind over matter,” said Ruthie, who admires her mother’s upbeat attitude.
Peggy looks at it this way: “Why get upset about something that has been taken care of? Fortunately (the cancer) was contained. Besides, I didn’t have time to think about myself.”
Polly Powers Stramm is a contributing lifestyles columnist. Contact Polly at 912-657-3877 or pollparrot@aol.com. See more columns by her at SavannahNow.com/lifestyle/.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah woman tells story of breast cancer diagnosis while pregnant
