Why We Need The Rose -- Day 11 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

The headlines in the year 2000 finally blared the sad and chilling truth that Texas had the highest uninsured rate of any state in the nation. In Houston, over one fourth of the population -- almost one million people (at that time) -- didn’t have coverage.  A lot of women were included in that number. Private insurance, when it could be found, topped over $600 a month for one person, an impossible amount for the working poor.

Telling the story of The Rose has always meant fighting the prevailing misconception that the poor could access healthcare anytime they wanted, either through the county hospital or, if they have cancer, through M.D. Anderson.

People would say, “Anyone can get public health care.” That’s a true statement, but the cost of services is dictated by a person’s income.  If you happen to be totally indigent, you are eligible for free services. Heaven forbid that a person attempt to stay off the public dole and try to earn a living. The ultimate irony was that totally indigent women received the full range of care -- from mastectomy to chemotherapy to radiation therapy to reconstruction -- all free of charge; while the working poor got only what they could afford.

No insurance and get into a premiere hospital without money?  Not likely, especially if you made more than $3,000 a year and lived in Houston which was the eligibility level at some hospitals.  According to the State edicts, the county hospital was the approved facility for residents of Harris County. Folks from the rest of the state looked to Galveston’s public health system for help. Oh, it’s true the occasional uninsured patient would get into a clinical trial at a major institution, but she had to have one of the wild types of cancer that matched the trials.

The maze of rules and regulations grew more complex and changing criteria for eligibility was maddening. Remember, in Texas Medicaid was virtually non- existent, saved only for children and pregnant women; for the most part it still is.

Connie was one of Dixie’s clients. She referred Connie to a public hospital for her mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments.  Dixie knew about Connie’s financial struggle. She and her husband operated a small plant nursery that could barely eke out a living for their family. Unfortunately, the profits were gobbled up by the medication expenses needed for her recently diagnosed diabetic husband.

Any hopes of finding another job were squelched when she weighed it against the time and expense involved in caring for the special needs of a bed-ridden handicapped child. On paper, however, hers appeared to be a much different story.  The business showed a profit for two out of the three years in the information she submitted when applying for public health.  That and the fact that she was buying a home put her in the 100% payment range for services.  Back then, Dixie didn’t know about these quirks in the public health system; none of us did.

So Connie carried her little referral paper to the hospital, finished the approval process and went in for her mastectomy.  Before she knew it she received her first bill for $5,000.  Then she was told that chemotherapy was going to cost $400 every three weeks. She’d already signed an agreement with the hospital to pay against her account which grew larger with each lab test or follow-up consultation.  Before they would schedule her appointments for the chemotherapy, she was going to have to come up with the money.

When Dixie received one of those form letters sent to referring physicians, advising her that her patient was determined to be non-compliant since she had not returned for treatments, she called Connie.

Hearing Connie talk was disheartening.  She was more than a little angry about the whole set up, and she had no intention of going back.  The money and the hours and hours of waiting were taking a toll.  She had to pay for someone to stay with her child each time she went for an appointment which might be rescheduled or would take all day.  The time she had been hospitalized had really hurt what was left of the business. She simply didn’t have the money and was fighting to keep food in the house.  To top things off, her husband had a heart attack during this time and couldn’t help.

The hospital suggested she get a second mortgage which she couldn’t have gotten if she’d wanted it. We’ve since learned that some hospitals strongly encouraged folks to take another mortgage on their homes to pay for treatment.  For the patient who is terrified for her life, it seems the only solution.

Connie had decided she would just have to take her chances and hope the mastectomy got all of the cancer; she would do without the chemotherapy.  Dixie tried to convince her otherwise, offering to call the hospital and try for new arrangements.  Dixie knew Connie really needed the chemotherapy and asked her if she understood how important the treatments were?

Connie’s parting words hung in the air. “Dr. Melillo, don’t you understand,” she retorted a bit too sharply. “If I’d had an extra $400 a month to shell out, I would have had insurance.”

As always, it’s a matter of money … for our patients needing help… and for The Rose as we try to help them.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Not Your Typical Fundraiser (continued) -- Day 10 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

The hall was too large to have a real auction but we always gave it a try. No one could hear, the sound system was great for bands, bad for auctioneers, but people would raise their hands and someone would capture the prize.  We’ve auctioned off anything and everything -- Linda and Dick of Kerr’s Wholesale donated rooms full of furniture; my cousin Chris made and donated a 6 ft. wooden glider; the year Dixie was unattached, we auctioned off a dinner and date with her.    
For about eight years running $1 raffle items were a chance to win Nona Morrison’s hand- made quilts or T-Bud’s hand-crafted fly fishing pole. The big raffle items changed every year.  The only one to really compete with the boat from that first year was the gorgeous walnut colored Winchester Grandfather Clock standing 8 feet tall and fully chimed. Another member of our support group did all the construction, stained and hand-finished it.  He worked on the project for four months for a few hours every day after he got off work.  He used it to fill up time after he lost his wife.  They had been part of our support group for about two years.

About a third of the folks that bought tickets for the event also donated some kind of dessert.  Ten tables were lined with slices of homemade cakes and pies, and bags of cookies.  Then the same folks would turn around and pay a dollar extra for dessert.

Throughout the day, our official money changer Helen would make the rounds picking up raffle money, cake walk money, and money from the door, and then disappear into the back room to deposit in the lodge’s floor safe.  Those piles of dollars would take a long time to count at the end of the day … or at least we always hoped that it would.

Traditions get started at events like this and one of them was that Dixie always served as the official greeter.  Her patients loved talking to Dixie and Dixie loved talking to them. She often said that that was the best part of her job. “What other work would let me spend the day getting to gossip and visit with people?” she’d say. “I love hearing about my patients, what they’re doing, what’s happening in their lives. It doesn’t even feel like work.”

I suspect her patients accounted for about half of the folks who attended. The other half was divided between folks from my church, employees, volunteers and their families, most of the operating room staff from the hospital plus a passel of cowboys and cowgirls who often went on trail rides with Dixie.

Looking out over the crowd was like looking into the face of The Rose. You’d see some people wearing their Sunday finest, others in jeans and cowboy hats, a bunch were in t-shirts and shorts, and there’d be couple of priestly collars sprinkled in.  I would spot one of our sponsored women bringing in a cake and see another standing next to the bank president behind the serving line.  They were both dishing up the shrimp, both there to help.

Like I said … the Shrimp Boils were always a community affair.

That first year was a $10,000 success. The figure has steadily grown over the years, with our latest Shrimp Boils bringing in more than $100,000 annually. And they still wouldn’t be possible without priceless donations of time and energy from our staff and volunteers.

I remember ending that first event thinking that we never would have made it without the bearded man and his beautiful wife. Jim continued to “captain” the shrimp boil for the next ten years, taking on even more serious jobs along the way, like serving on the Board.

I never told Jim or Marsha about my dream.  They’d understand, though. They are part of those special people who know we don’t do this alone.  The Rose has had a lot of help, visible and invisible -- boxes of books sent by unknown benefactors, the unexpected gift, the members of Congress who’ve fought for us, and more.  Call it God or the Universe, receiving a rose from St. Teresa or finding a penny from Regina’s mother, there seems to be some other force at work.

Dixie often says, especially during our times of crisis, “I know God has a plan for us, I just wish He’d let me in on it!”

When people ask if we are faith-based, I respond, “Heck, yes we are.”  It takes a lot of faith to keep The Rose going.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Not Your Typical Fundraiser -- Day 9 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

Every charity relies on fundraisers. The usual events are cocktail parties and elegant galas.  The Rose has always been a bit different. For many years, our primary annual fundraiser involved rounding up pickup trucks, traveling 30 miles down the road, and picking up fresh shrimp from fishing boats at Kemah. 

I remember year after year following those trucks, watching the oversized ice coolers bounce around in the back of them and thinking we had lost our minds. We needed lots of coolers and lots of ice; it was a lot of shrimp. We usually hassled over the price and number of pounds right up until the day before. Actually we often had to go to two or three different places to get the total we needed.  Finally all loaded up, water streaming out of the chests, we all bounced back into town. Then we sat on the tailgates of those trucks and started de-heading the little suckers, all 600 pounds of ‘em. Yes, it was July in Houston, hotter than Hades, but hey, the price was right! 

But we weren’t through yet.  Next we’d round up another group of volunteers and haul more food stuff inside the SPJST Lodge’s grand ballroom so we could tackle shucking 600 pounds of fresh corn, cleaning 300 pounds of potatoes, and making up 2000 little containers of cocktail sauce. It took the entire day.

Actually, we would have probably had a barbeque or something equally sane if Alan, my husband (at that time), hadn’t won this bass boat.  He’d aced a hole in one at the Mickey Gilley Charity Golf Tournament.  His prize was a brand new micro 15 ft. bass boat, compliments of Gilley’s brother who owned a marine business.  His photo accepting the boat from Mickey made all the local papers and warranted a blurb on the evening news.

As usual I was oblivious to his latest golfing excursion.  I didn’t even realize he’d taken the day off for the tournament, so I was pretty surprised when he came home all excited about winning the boat and how it would be a great fundraiser for the Rose.  Actually, I didn’t follow his logic, it made more sense to me to just sell it and donate the money.  But he kept on, outlining elaborate schemes on ways to turn it into a fabulous fundraiser. He talked about involving local celebrities, getting lots of publicity, a dinner, a gala, the ideas were endless.  

By now I’d made the jump from corporate America, leaving behind the customary things like benefits, retirement, and regular paychecks.  I had my hands full trying to run the business, write the grants, and manage the mobile unit and other programs we were offering in 1990. Pulling together a fundraising event wasn’t high on my list.

About a month passed and I still hadn’t a clue what to do with that boat, and the spouse was getting more and more huffy over my apparent lack of interest. That was when I had this dream.  It had been one of those fitful nights spent staring at the ceiling worrying over the unit, hoping we’d make payroll and wondering how to find funding. Finally sleep came and with it a magical dream.

I was in house on the mezzanine level, looking down at women gathered on the first floor.  A man entered. By his dress, he was a fisherman. He was a big attractive man with a white beard that covered his face.  He went up to one of the women -- the prettiest woman there.  She wore her beauty well with every fashion choice serving to enhance her attributes. Her laughter floated through the air as they started up the stairs. 

I woke up knowing that somehow everything would be alright.

That evening during support group, a couple came.  They’d attended one or two times before but I didn’t know them well.  During the announcements, I explained that Alan had donated this boat to The Rose but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

Jim Anderson jumped right in, “What you need is a shrimp boil to go along with the boat theme.  I know some folks who could do the cooking,” he offered.  His wife Marsha caught his excitement and said, “Raffle the boat off, sell tickets for $5 each.”

$5? A piece? That amount caused a big debate within the group. 

Marsha finally stopped the debate by saying, “We won’t have a bit of trouble selling tickets at that price … just give them to me and Jim.”  The two of them exchanged knowing glances. She reached over and patted his beard.

I remember looking at her and thinking then that she looked like a dream.  She had long, dark hair, and was a curvaceous woman who knew how to wear her clothes well. Her treatment had just started. 

Marsha and Jim knew exactly what they were doing. We tried to deem them chairs of our first fundraiser, but they just wanted to handle the raffle. Handle it they did, selling over  $5,000 worth of tickets.  The entire raffle raised $6,600. 

The Shrimp Boil became a community affair.

Anna Belle convinced the folks at the SPJST Lodge to donate their grand ballroom that seated 1,000 people and had this huge dance floor. She and Dixie found three country western bands to donate an hour apiece of their time.  So we had the place, the raffle, and the entertainment lined up for a Sunday afternoon in July.

From the beginning there was always some wonderful benefactor or two who helped cover the cost of the shrimp and somehow we managed to get everything else donated. We spent the best part of a month gathering auction items and getting commitments for food. The first year, Marsha convinced a truck farmer friend to deliver his gift of 400 hundred pounds of potatoes straight to the hall. Usually we weren’t that lucky. 

Daily folks would drop by our little Center bringing more stuff, until there wasn’t an open spot left anywhere. Volunteers canvassed local grocery stores securing butter and cooking oil, onions and spices, tea and coffee.

Since the beginning Ola Mae provided the hush puppies, the bags filled up half of her freezer and Shirley Middleton brought all the paper goods, bags and bags of plastic ware, one thousand each of dinner plates, dessert plates, paper cups and glasses, hundreds of napkins.

Jim and his friend Neil drove this huge cooking trailer over to the Lodge and took up over four parking spots.  Neil would pay some of his workers to come help move the huge pots and burners and they all stayed outside cooking up the shrimp, potatoes and corn on the cob.  The SPJST Ballroom would reek for weeks from the smell of all that shrimp. There’d be a lot of fussing going on about it among the Lodge members, but somehow they’d forgive us and rent the hall to us again the next year.

When that first Sunday finally arrived, people were lined up around the block waiting for us to open. At $8 bucks a piece it was a great deal.

To be continued …

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Technology … And People … Making a Difference -- Day 8 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

Sometimes it only takes one person who is willing to help that moves a dream into reality. Ron Smith was one of those people. Ron was the owner of Diagnox Imaging Services and he offered to donate a fully dedicated mammography GE Imaging system, this included the X-ray machine, processor and conditioner--$160,000 worth of equipment.

He had made that offer to us in January of 1987 but we didn’t have a place to put it, and couldn’t possibly afford the staff to run it or supplies for it.  Dixie and I spent weekends scouting out possible locations for its home. 

She was like one of those early pioneers walking around with a divining rod looking for water.  We would pull up to a shopping center; she’d get out, and walk around, then say, “Nope, not it!” and hop back into the truck. We had lots of options to explore -- vacant office buildings were another fallout of the bad economy of the 80s.

Finally, we came across the South Green Shopping center, at Fuqua and the Gulf Freeway. We both liked something about that spot which started looking even better after the leasing agent said we could have a space for free for the first three months and after that, he’d charge us $3 for every paying woman we screened. We thought it was a heck of a deal, but then what did we know?

October 1987, the first Rose mammography center opened with a waiting list of sixty women.  Mammograms cost only $50 and a sponsorship program was available for high-risk women who couldn’t afford to pay.  Everything in the center had been donated, from furniture, to filing cabinets to the pictures on the wall.  We used to tease about being decorated in “early garage sale,” but it looked good.  The volunteers made it seem homey, the technical aspects were excellent, and the women felt comfortable. 

Except for the fact that we have traded in “garage sale” for “decorator-designed,” not much has changed. We still ensure that women – all women – are welcomed at The Rose.

In 25 years, we have had a fair share of “firsts” -- when we offered the first film screen mammography machines in Houston, the first Computer Aided Detection (CAD) service in 2001, and the first portable mammography unit launching our mobile program in 2006. Now, every time we experience another technological milestone – the most recent being our conversion to digital - I’m reminded of Ron’s initial gift. And I am grateful once again.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Endowing a Dream -- Day 7 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

A lot of miracles are associated with The Rose. Some involve life and death situations: a woman beats all the odds or a tiny cancer is serendipitously found; others revolve around the happenstance meeting with someone who returns years later and changes the course of The Rose. But few rival the sequencing of our approval as a 501(3)(c) non-profit.
Dixie called me early one morning.  She was so excited she could barely talk.  She had just seen a news story on the Today Show about Endow a Dream, a grant that was going to award $100,000.  Everything we wanted to do could be answered by capturing this prize.  So I called the organization (this was pre-web days remember) and, after what seemed forever, we finally received the application packet.

Unfortunately, one requirement stated that awards would only be made to non-profit 501(c) 3 organizations.  In October 1985, we had filed a DBA (doing business as)for The Rose.  We had started to organize the governing Board for it but not much else. For over a year, we had talked about needing to apply for our non-profit status.

The time for talk had ended. The award deadline was 13 days away. 

Somehow out of the blue, or maybe it was through the Yeiters, our future CPA company, we found a lawyer who was willing to file the paperwork.  Michael Sterns probably thought we were crazy with this harebrain idea of setting up a non-profit that offered low cost mammograms. He made us explain and re-explain what it was we wanted to do. Although the “charity” work has always been significant at The Rose, we didn’t base our application on providing free services.  In fact, from the very beginning we emphasized that those who could afford to pay for services would allow us to care for those who could not.

If Michael didn’t think the concept was crazy, he sure questioned our sanity when we told him we needed it prepared, sent to the Feds (IRS) and approved in less than two weeks.  Part of the application process required State Charter plus submitting Articles of Incorporation with the State and a complete budget for the next four years. To say the least, the application process is a bit daunting and a bunch of paperwork.

He agreed.  Dixie and I shared the cost of his fee.

The next week was spent rounding up facts and figures, I wrote most of the narrative for the explanation and Michael started hand carrying it through the process.

Seven days later we were notified of the approval! August 15, 1986, The Rose was finally official.

After all that, we didn’t win the Endow a Dream Award. However, we did start raising money.

Being the feminist that I am, it’s a little difficult to admit that our first fundraiser involved selling men, but it’s true.  The Soroptimist, a local business women’s group of about 25 members, officially hosted the Bachelor of Distinction event. We held it at the local Hilton, who allowed us to bring in our on food -- an unheard of concession for hotels.

The popular news anchor, Kathryn Turner, agreed to emcee the night and told us years later that she had never seen anyone as frightened as Dixie was to be on stage.  Even though Shirley Middleton had ransacked her Bridal Shop and found Dixie a fancy evening dress, even though Dixie talked to hundreds of groups about breast cancer, this was different. We were crossing a line into the wild world of special events and fundraising.  Rosalie Kuntz and Stella Walters handled the money, Robbie Rainwater handled the cash bar.  We auctioned off about 29 men -- physicians, bankers, an ex or two -- it didn’t matter; it was for a good cause, The Rose.  In the forefront and background was Sherry Moore, who commandeered that fundraiser and, later, many, many others.  

We raised $7,000 that night. That $7,000 was the seed money that opened our first screening center.

Anytime someone tells me their group is too small to make a difference in the world, I tell the story of the Soroptimists and the Bachelors Auction.  I am so grateful to that handful of women who believed in us. They didn’t know then that the snacks they donated, the hours they spent mailing invitations and decorating would be the launching point of an organization that would become a national model for health programs reaching the medically underserved.

Too small? Never.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Planting Our Rose Garden -- Day 6 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

I could write ten books about the women* in our support groups. 
In 1989, the jury was still "out" concerning the clinical and/or psychological value of support groups.  One line of thought among the survivors went something like, "I have my family or friends to lean on, I don't need a support group." Of course, most of the physicians thought it was a bunch of … shall we just say “a waste”? 

Dixie was convinced that nothing was more important than The Rose offering a support group.  Her ideas were eventually vindicated when a study revealed women who participated in support groups experienced twice the survival rate as those who didn't. 

We feverishly reproduced the article, attached it to our announcements about our new Breast Cancer Support Group, and distributed it to the physicians.   During those first few months, the only women who attended were Dixie's patients.  Eventually, other physicians started recommending the group to their patients. And once they did, the support groups grew.

Dixie's patient's definitely had the advantage.  Once diagnosed, she'd suggest they attend a support group meeting prior to their surgery.  She didn't make it an order or a big deal.  She simply convinced them that they could learn what to expect from other women who’d had a mastectomy or lumpectomy.

The Rose Garden – the name given to the group - met every second and fourth Tuesday. The two particle board desks at the Center would be pushed back against the wall and the mismatched orange and green chairs were moved next to the overstuffed brilliant blue couch to create a makeshift semicircle. 

The entire center only occupied 980 sq. ft, of which the reception area was about one-third of it. A huge round pole stood smack dab in the middle of the front area that we tried to camouflage it with plants and coat trees but it never cooperated. Attempting to project images via slides was a joke. We had no room for the screen and the walls were covered from top to bottom with donated treasures or posters. But the speakers came anyway. 

And, in spite of it all, the women did as well. At some meetings more than 40 women would gather in that little spot of our world. 

Imagine being a first timer and entering a room packed with women who were obviously at different stages of treatment. Some were bald; some were not. Some were old; some were young. A few had family members with them.  First impressions of our Rose Garden included the sound of laughter, the din of conversation, and the smells of fresh coffee and sweet food.

The talk didn't let up until Dixie arrived. She usually ran a bit late, dragging in from feeding her horses or stopping by one more patient's room at the hospital.  No one cared how late she was.  Then, as now, Dixie brought hope into the room. 

In those days, our support group wasn’t sanctioned locally by the nationally recognized society of “Cancer Authority.” Seems our facilitator had not completed the certification program, and our group didn’t follow the structured 6 to 8 week program where appropriate topics are assigned for each week.  Dixie argued that the women might not be ready to discuss emotional issues right on schedule by week three. 

After year one, we convinced the powers that be that perhaps the Rose Garden should be approved. Our cause may have been somewhat assisted when Dixie became the Chair of the Reach to Recovery Group and been assigned as the Physician Liaison for the state-wide Texas Breast Cancer Screening Project.

We followed somewhat of a semi-structured format.  We started by sharing articles and lists of new books in the lending library. The prized document of every first timer was Dr. Melillo's Official Vitamin List. 

Somewhere between 6:45 and 7:00 PM the support group meetings would start.  One by one, each woman would introduce herself and share a little information about her journey. 

“I'm Mary Lou and one week after I turned 32 I was diagnosed. That was 13 months ago.”  Mary Lou wore a long red wig that had started to look like it was way too much hair for her body which seemed tinier at each meeting.  “I'm taking my last chemotherapy this week. I have a nine-year-old who has reached that ignorant stage, she ignores everything and a three-year-old who wants to know where Mommy’s hair went.”

“I'm Dianne and I was diagnosed two years ago but had a reoccurrence.  I've got metastasis to the liver and I’ve done the rounds of chemo so the next step is having a bone marrow transplant. It all depends on if everything works out, if the insurance approves it and if my blood count comes back ok.”  Dianne's hair was short, her body swollen.

“I'm Margaret and this is my second round with it also.  Chemotherapy just isn't working. I had a double mastectomy.”  Margaret's daughters always came with her.  They sat on either side of her and with mischief in their eyes but still straight-faced tell the group that their mother was really being grumpy lately so they tried to ignore her.  “After all,” they countered. “She did have the big C.”  The group usually took a second or two to recover and recognize that a big tease had been shared between the three women. The truth of their relationship was revealed as the girls held Maragaret's hand or kept touching the little slips of hair that was left on her head.

"I'm Liz and, like Mary Lou, I was 32 when I had my mastectomy on the right side. A year after my diagnosis, I had to have a mammogram on the other side. This was before The Rose opened so I was going to a different clinic. Well when I got there I found out that the lady at the desk had cancelled my appointment. She said, ‘You're too young to have a mammogram.’  I just looked at her and fired back, ‘Well, Lady, I'm not too young to have breast cancer!’"  We would shake our heads.

"I'm Susan and I haven't had my surgery yet." The room would become quieter.  "I just got my diagnoses yesterday." She'd continue and someone would begin asking the questions to get her talking.  If Dixie were her doctor the others would start telling stories about being a Dixie patient.  They'd tell her she was now part of a community that no one would volunteer to be in but at least with Dixie it was tolerable.  They talked of being their own alum and how they’d make their 30^th reunion.

Everyone always clapped when the gorgeous, well-coifed woman, wearing the prettiest clothes in the world, would say, "I'm Ellen and I'm a 13-year survivor."  Of course most of us were more interested in hearing about Ellen’s new boyfriend or her latest travel adventure. Her shiny silver locks confirmed she was pushing 60 but her spirit and energy rivaled any 20-year-old.  She was the ultimate volunteer, busy with a dozen organizations including The Rose.  Her only reoccurring problem was not having enough hours in the day to do all she was scheduled to do.

Sometimes a woman voiced feeling like she wasn't being a good wife since she couldn't keep up with all the household chores.  The others would dive in on that one.  “Let it pile up!” they'd say.  Occasionally, we’d hear skittish talk of what else a "good wife" didn't feel like doing or how unattractive they felt at times but usually those stories got a little too uncomfortable and just hung in the air, seldom resolved.

The very few dared to talk of their bitterness.  No one judged them.  The woman would be encouraged to talk out her feelings, but the group had a way of not dwelling in the mire of despair. 

Some would share how they were learning to put their needs first and were taking better care of themselves.  Some would tell of a friend's kindness, a meal cooked, kids collected and taken away for a weekend. 

Dixie would end the meetings saying, "None of us knows how long we have on this earth.  The only thing we do have is right now, right here and each other.  This group has taught me that I need to appreciate every sunrise and every sunset.  And I've also learned the importance of hugs."   She'd smile and remind everyone, "Hugs are good for the immune system. You can never get enough hugs.”

"Or cookies!" Someone from the back of the room would respond.

The room would erupt in laughter.  Dixie would start the rounds until everyone had been soundly hugged. Then we ate and talked some more. Some nights we got out early. Anytime before 10 PM was early.

Dixie and I attended more funerals during those early years than my priest officiated over. I started learning about those sunrises and sunsets, and every other week I was brought to a new sense of awe by the courage found within our little Rose Garden.

*The names of the support group members were changed for reasons of privacy.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.
© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Anna Belle -- Day 5 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

The people who were brave enough to take those first steps alongside us kept me humble.  From our beginning, volunteers have been at the heart of The Rose.  I marvel at the generosity of people, and always wonder what motivates them give so freely of their time and talents. 

Anna Belle Baugus was one of those people. She started at the center as a volunteer and later became our first paid non-technical employee.  She was a patient of Dixie's, having gone through her own bout with breast cancer a few years before I met her.  Seems, breast cancer was the nemesis of her family, her mother, and one sister had died of it, and her other sister was fighting it.

Meeting Anna Belle meant coming face to face with the enemy.  Breast cancer was no longer a nebulous clinical diagnosis confined to a few women who briefly crossed my path.   Now it became fully exposed, unfathomable in its callousness. The  threat of reoccurrence was palpable and became a silent and invisible intruder bordering every conversation, every success, every passage of normal living. 

Anna Belle would have violently objected to my description.  She’d be the first to insist that breast cancer was just one of those things that happens in one’s life. 

Describing Anna Belle is a challenge.  Take everything good, mix it with a lot of country, top it with genuine hospitality and dabble in some of most outrageous humor you'd ever expect to find in a woman, and you'd have a glimpse of Anna Belle.  A natural beauty, she had a certain elegant presence contradicted slightly by the layers of denim she often wore. Her sharp, opinionated speech and no nonsense approach to life regularly caught me off guard.  Anna Belle told it as it was.  Sometimes the telling wasn't always easy to hear.

You'd think someone who'd had such intimate history with breast cancer would be incredibly sympathetic to the plight of others but her she never had any "truck" with whiners. Her approach was you do what you have to do, you pay attention and don't believe everything the doctors tell you. You’re the one that decides how long you're going to live, she’d tell you.

She always had a new joke to share.  Invariably it bordered on the risqué or bawdy but would be just clean enough to squeak by.  Then she'd fall into hysterical laughter when she delivered the punch lines. You couldn't help but join in her merriment.

Anna Belle thought most of our patients were geographically challenged. Often she would schedule an appointment and hang up the telephone saying, "That one will never find us."

She was never more vocal than when she thought someone was trying to take advantage of our sponsorship program.  I don't think any non-deserving person managed to get by her.  She'd look the patient right in the eyes and make a comment about what a nice suit or ring she had on (or fine automobile she was driving) and then she'd immediately ask how much did she think she could pay towards this mammogram. 

Back then I really worried about her questioning too much. I wrestled with the thought that we might actually turn away someone who really needed our help, but funds were limited.  I sure didn’t want our criteria to be so strict that we couldn’t make a decision to help someone who was temporarily down on her luck.

"There would always be some," I'd try to assuage her indignation, "who would try to beat the system."

"And I know everyone of them," she'd retort. 

My worries were ill-founded. For that woman who really was down on her luck, Anna Belle would be the first in line to help.  The old saying "give you the shirt of her back," must have started with her.  Her “heart of gold” was never more obvious than during support groups.

By the time Anna Belle became a part of The Rose, she was clearing her third cancer free year.  Anna Belle had undergone a double lumpectomy, the second one was done months after her first surgery.  She was one of the rare women who didn't lose her hair during chemotherapy, something she usually didn't share with the support group.  She had lots of other stories to share.

When Anna Belle had a reoccurrence, the cancer was especially vicious.  I remember the day, the look on her face, the tipping point that foreshadowed the end of her life.  She had completed her annual mammogram. The tech called asking me to go back to the mammography work area. I pushed open the doors to see her leaning up against the wall, staring at the films on the light box.  The cancer was obvious. 

“This makes me so damn mad.” she said with a pure hatred that I had never heard in anyone’s voice before. 

The months that followed were impossible. Anna Belle was the office manager, she held together the entire operation. Hers was the back that carried the load and her load was about to become even heavier. 

The process started -- biopsy, surgery, bilateral mastectomies, reconstruction, complications and chemotherapy.  This time she did lose her hair; she was incredibly ill. Yet she kept on working, through the next year and a half, at first trying to keep her regular schedule, then moving to part time. 

The most vivid memories I have of her now all revolve around those last months of working. She’d walk into my office wearing a sassy hat, or bright scarf, make-up always perfect, lipstick in place.  The most important thing she wore was her “I can beat this” face.

She might have too if her husband of over 29 years hadn’t contracted a cancer of his own. The tumor that appeared on his arm seemed to multiply overnight covering his body. He was diagnosed with leukemia, even more aggressive than what she was fighting. Within ten months he was dead.

She once told me he had no choice but to leave, he couldn’t bare to see her so ill.  Once he died, Anna Belle’s cancer metastasized to her lungs. The battle was winding down, and one day, much too soon, she was gone.

This same two-year period marked a huge growth cycle at The Rose. The Rose Joan Gordon Center was bulging at its seams and months were spent finding it a larger, new home.

We opened the Rose on Vista in Pasadena which immediately became incredibly busy and was a huge success. A year later, we opened a small screening center across town which proved to be a time consuming and short lived disaster.

We jumped from 7 employees to 21 employees and had to lease extra office space at the main center. New funding meant computerizing our system and attempting to combine our multi data bases, a feat we never quite achieved. We were involved in more fund raisers than ever before and received publicity that would have made major corporations envious. We were leaving behind an old way of being and entering into a new one.  We had no option, the number of women needing our help continued to explode, forcing us into new areas and levels of service.

I felt Annabelle’s absence with every change. The challenges were sharper without her sometimes cynical but always encouraging humor that kept me grounded. Our successes never again would be celebrated with her outrageous enthusiasm.

As much as we welcomed the new, it’s hard to say goodbye, especially to an old friend.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.
© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.