Story by Deb Peterson | Photographed by Clint Sawyer
Catherine Sawyer has been as surprised as everyone around her at the changing color of her hair.
She’s been blonde, brunette, and auburn—in addition to being bald!—as a result of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer.
“I definitely don’t see myself as a blonde,” Catherine says. “I see myself as I am today with the dark hair, the same person but with a different outlook on life.”
When Catherine learned that she would likely lose her hair around the 14th day of treatment, she had Katie at The Salon in Mountain Home cut her hair short.
“I wanted everyone to feel comfortable around me,” she says.
She looked through wig books with Katie and then went wig shopping with husband Clint.
“We had a lot of fun,” she says. “At 14 days, just like everyone said, I had hair on my shoulders.”
She grabbed the barber shears and a stool and headed for the deck with Clint, who shaved her remaining hair.
“We laughed and joked and had a great time,” she says.
Catherine’s sons, Rick, 30, and Randy, 28, shaved their heads, too, to show support.
That was a Friday. On Monday, Catherine arrived at work as coordinator of the Library Foundation at the Donald W. Reynolds Library in Mountain Home wearing her new wig, cut exactly like her former style, and nobody knew the difference.
“I was self-conscious at first,” Catherine says, “but even if I felt terrible, work was therapy. Going to work every day and looking good made me feel better.”
As she progressed on this journey she didn’t choose, her look would change dramatically, but let’s back up and start at the beginning. Catherine’s hair loss is only a hint of how breast cancer changed this marvelous woman.
The Beginning
When Catherine found a lump in her breast during a self examination, she had it checked out and was relieved, but a little surprised, when it was diagnosed as a cyst.
During the next year and a half, the lump grew, but Catherine was busy flying back and forth to California to help her mother, who was struggling with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and she ignored her intuition.
In late 2009, Catherine’s life changed in myriad and very traumatic ways in the span of a few months.
She and Clint were struck by a semi-trailer truck in an accident that totaled their vehicle. They were lucky to survive.
A few weeks later, Catherine’s stepfather died suddenly from a massive heart attack, and shortly after that, Catherine got the news that the biopsy she had finally insisted on was malignant.
“I learned that my mother had died only hours before being told that I had an aggressive form of breast cancer,” Catherine says.
And that wasn’t the end of the bad news. Clint was diagnosed with diabetes a few weeks later.
Through it all, Catherine got up every morning, dressed up, and went to work.
“I never thought of myself as sick,” she says. “I never thought of dying from cancer. It wasn’t an option.”
Catherine adopted the fortitude she had watched in her mother, who never complained while getting chemotherapy twice a week for three years.
“Mom had a wonderful attitude,” Catherine says. “I thought, if she can do it, I can do it. That’s where I got my strength.”
Catherine got to work educating herself about her disease.
“I spent two and a half hours on the phone one Saturday talking with someone from Cancer Treatment Centers of America,” she says. “I was encouraged to get a second opinion.”
After consulting with her local surgeon, she was referred to and chose Dr. Suzanne Klimberg’s team at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.
Two days after the dedication of the library, Catherine had surgery to remove the tissue of both breasts. In a remarkable reconstructive procedure, her skin and nipples were lifted and replaced over implants. Catherine also benefited from a procedure Klimberg developed to prevent lymphedema, or swelling of the arms due to faulty drainage of the lymph nodes.
“Clint and I were amazed at how natural I look,” Catherine says.
But the focal point of Catherine’s experience with cancer was not the surgery or the loss of her hair—it was the people in her life.
The People
Catherine made new friends in the “Look Good, Feel Better” program at the Peitz Cancer Support House in Mountain Home.
“We were all there together, learning how to draw eyebrows and laughing together,” she says. “You have to be able to laugh at it.”
She felt supported by Ruth Ann Clayton at Nature’s Way, who made sure Catherine had the dietary supplements she needed, and Dr. Le and Inez Gibbs, who sat with Clint during the surgery and offered spiritual support, friendship, and research.
She is still close to the women she developed friendships with while going through chemotherapy together, and plans to walk with them in the Komen Race for the Cure in Little Rock on Oct. 22.
But her coworkers, trustees, and volunteers at the library surprised her most of all. Word about Catherine’s breast cancer had gotten out. On her last day of work before leaving for her surgery, she noticed everyone was wearing pink. She didn’t think much about it until she was called to an impromptu staff meeting. She entered a room full of pink and was presented with a big basket of pink love presents.
“That touched me more than anything,” she says, clearly still moved by the experience.
The Hair
Coping with the loss of your hair, on top of everything else that comes with being diagnosed with cancer, can be stressful, but for Catherine, hair loss had some advantages.
Travel is definitely easier, she says. No shampoo to pack. No need to shave your legs.
“You just throw on a wig and go,” she says.
She was ready to go out so much faster than Clint, she remembers with a laugh.
At home, she went bald, and when her hair had started to grow back dark and curly, it was Clint who talked her out of her wig.
“He said I looked like a chic New Yorker,” Catherine says.
And in fact, she was stopped while shopping in a long black coat and asked if she was from New York.
Friends didn’t recognize her. While dining in a restaurant with her husband, friends approached Clint to say hello and just smiled at her, assuming she was a stranger.
“It was fun surprising people,” Catherine says. “I had a new look. Clint had a new wife. We had a lot of fun with it.”
And now, her dark hair is turning auburn, and Catherine feels just fine about that. She’s ready for anything.
The Advice
Having been through cancer treatment, Catherine’s advice is to “push.”
“Follow your intuition,” she says.
She feels she should have pushed harder in the very beginning when she suspected cancer.
After her diagnosis, she felt an urgency to get the cancer out of her body, but instead, she started learning.
“Slow down and get educated. Take time to learn your options. Talk to people who have been through it,” she says. “Everyone is different. Do what is right for you.”
Today, Catherine and Clint are eating better as they work to control Clint’s diabetes. And Catherine, a former bodybuilder, uses a photo Clint took of her at the beach several years ago as inspiration to exercise.
“Everything takes on a different meaning when you go through a life-altering experience,” she says. “It makes you more aware of the simple pleasures and treasures in life, like family and friends, and enjoying the moment we are in. Things we thought were so important, really are not.”
M! October/November 2011
See To Your Health! Hair Loss During Chemotherapy by Corinne Hiser, and meet Jan Price and Katy Tessman Stanoch, breast cancer survivors.
Diana Hadley Slater
Catherine & I were childhood friends. I have not been very good about keeping in touch and have wondered many times how she is doing. I have done occasional internet searches for her with no luck. I was both shocked and amazed at finding this article about her but not amazed about how she has made her way through this difficult journey. I wish her continued health and happiness.