Delores Crawford had her routine: Wake up, go to work, spend time with family, dinner, then bedtime. Every once in a while, she added a visit to the doctor to her routine.
This continued for decades until one day her physician of 20 years discovered that Crawford had a lump in her breast. It was then that Crawford realized her routines from that moment on were going to change.
“My first thought was I can’t leave my baby,” she said. “How can I have breast cancer when I get a mammogram every year?”
She was confused and shocked by the news, especially since no one in her family had breast cancer.
In fact, the news was so shocking that she went to River Oaks to get a full X-ray of the damage.
Doctors referred her to specialists at St. Joseph Medical Hospital, who told Crawford they found a lymph node nearly the size of a golf ball in her breast.
At this time, she and her family knew it was official. Breast cancer had snuck its way into the family, but they were not going to let it stay.
“I went to the specialists at M.D. Anderson,” she said. “The first time I was there, our appointment was at 10:30 a.m. and there were a lot of people. I checked on my appointment at around 11:15, we still were waiting. I finally went in at 11:45 and I asked them why it took so long, they said, ‘It’s because we spend time on our patients.’”
And that they did. She said her experience at M. D. Anderson from July to December 2002 went smoothly thanks to all the people and the support system at the hospital.
It was exactly what she needed since she had to get a lumpectomy, followed by hours of chemotherapy and radiation.
Her battle with breast cancer took Crawford on an emotional and physical roller coaster throughout the entire treatment and recovery process.
“I lost all of my hair. I was really pale. I came to work when I could,” she said. “My doctor didn’t want me to come in too often while I was going through chemotherapy. The radiation was the worst. It felt like it grilled my skin. I didn’t want to go to get it done. But I had to go every day.
“After that second or third week, I couldn’t go anywhere because I couldn’t let anything touch (me). After that, that was it. I had to go back every month to make sure it was truly gone.” Crawford said.
It finally did leave, without coming back to visit — she calls it a blessing in disguise.
“I am blessed. At my church, there are a lot of breast cancer groups,” Crawford said. “M.D. Anderson has a good support group and they have wigs they can give you because people donate them. I even donated mine.
“I wore a wig when I went out because my friends called me Casper, the friendly ghost.”
It’s fair to say she still gets goose bumps when she thinks back on her experiences.
But it would have been much worse if she didn’t have her “rock” helping her every step of the way.
“My daughter was really sad,” she said, her eyes slightly welling up with tears. “She tried not to let me see it but she was there for me. She was my rock.”
Now, the advertising manager for Student Publications tries to be a rock for others by encouraging students to understand that no one is immune to breast cancer.
“Read and understand all the information because you have to be strong and aware to fight this.”
That’s just what Crawford did. She looked cancer in the face, fought back and is now an eight-year survivor.
