My name is Jim Fontella and I am a breast cancer survivor. There is a long history of breast cancer in my family. My oldest sister is a survivor, too—she had breast cancer about 25 years ago. My youngest sister had a large mass discovered on her left breast a week ago and she is scheduled for a biopsy. This is my history with breast cancer from start to finish.

I’m a 62-year-old bricklayer and tile setter. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, but in 1981 I moved to Dallas, where construction was booming, to start my own business. In 1998, I moved back to Michigan to be close to my family and many of my lifelong friends. I had planned to work for someone for a short time until I got settled, and then to start up on my own again. At first, everything went as planned. I found work immediately with a union company, with full benefits.

Since I hadn’t had medical benefits during my 18 years in Texas, I decided to have a physical. About a week before the appointment I found a lump under my right armpit, which I brought to the doctor’s attention. He recommended I get a surgeon’s opinion.

The surgeon told me that there could be several reasons for the lump and suggested we wait a few weeks to see what it did. It might just disappear on its own. But about a week later I found another lump, this one behind my right nipple. The surgeon saw me the same day and immediately scheduled a biopsy of the lump on my breast. He told me that it would take several days for the results to come back and that he would call me when they did. He called me himself a couple days later to tell me I had breast cancer.

Now I am going to digress back many years to give you a better understanding of my reaction when I first heard of my diagnosis. I am a Marine combat veteran. I was in Vietnam for most of 1965 and a small part of 1966. My four-year tour of duty ended in April of 1967. For more than a decade after returning home, I medicated myself with alcohol and marijuana to relieve feelings and thoughts of helplessness. I was suffering from depression but had no idea what it was or what was causing it.

I quit drinking and smoking in 1979, when I fell in love with the woman who would become my second wife. Our relationship problems began almost immediately. Because I was having thoughts of suicide, I decided to get help from a psychiatrist, who asked me questions about my family history and occasionally let me ramble. My rambling led to thoughts and violent dreams of my experiences during the war, but instead of taking them seriously, the psychiatrist said I was having issues with my deceased father.

At this time the economy in Michigan was not good and I was having trouble getting work, so my wife, son, and I moved to Texas. My marriage continued to deteriorate and I again sought professional help, this time going the Vet Center of Dallas for free counseling. After several sessions with a counselor and the center’s therapist, I was diagnosed with late-onset posttraumatic stress disorder. I found out that thousands of veterans all over the country were having problems, and this was the reason that the Veterans Administration opened the Vet Centers in major cities all over the country.

I filed a claim with the VA for medical benefits so that I could continue therapy in a VA hospital to relieve the symptoms and help me function more normally at work and with family. The VA turned me down. Shortly afterwards, I divorced again, and then got married and divorced a third time.

So by 1998 I had been married and divorced three times, had four children, and had worked at well over a hundred jobs since I had been discharged from the Marine Corps. I had been on almost every antidepressant known to man, but I still had nightmares and intrusive thoughts I couldn’t shake, and suicide was always on my mind. I was 53 years old and weary. I wanted to come home, back to my family in Michigan. They had no idea of my problems. I never talked to anyone about them.

Whenever I talk to a group of people about breast cancer, the question always comes up about how I, being male, felt when I was told of my illness. I always say I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. But, in reality, I was almost glad. I told myself that it would all be over soon—no more pain. All those years of survivor guilt, memories, and thoughts and dreams of the violence would end.

I was told I needed to have a modified radical mastectomy, which could be scheduled right away. But a friend of mine knew of a fantastic surgeon and wanted me to talk to her. I made an appointment with the doctor and, feeling more comfortable with her, I decided to have her do the surgery. I was in and out of the hospital in one day. After the surgery I couldn’t raise my right arm and I had two tubes stitched in my side to drain fluid.

At my follow-up appointment the doctor told me that she had removed 26 nodes, 14 of which were positive, and that my cancer was in stage three. I had probably had it for three to eight years without knowing it. She recommended three oncologists, and, since so many of the nodes were positive, she also recommended chemo and radiation. Dr. Folbe was the second oncologist I saw and I took an instant liking to him. He also recommended chemo and radiation, but I didn’t believe I could handle it since I was prone to depression. Moreover, I didn’t like the idea of the side effects of the chemicals. He told me I had about a one-month window in which to make up my mind. Even with the chemo, I had a 50-50 chance of surviving five years.

A friend of mine, a vegetarian who had at one time taken courses to become a holistic doctor, was totally against chemotherapy. After a few weeks of consideration, I decided not to take the chemo but to start radiation immediately. I want to make it clear that this was my own decision. I also went to see a holistic doctor, who put me on all kinds of different herbs, and a dietitian, who put me on a high-protein and high-calorie diet to raise my immune system. Well, the herbs were very expensive and I wasn’t able to work, so within four or five months my bank account was empty, but I stayed on the mostly vegetarian diet for a year and a half.

My surgery was in September 1998 and I was able to return to work in February 1999. I worked for one company for a year, which was a record for me. In February 2000 my neck started to feel stiff, slightly sore—nothing serious, but irritating nonetheless. One day, when, in a fit of anger, I threw a wooden gate down onto the ground, an unbearable pain shot right to my brain. Thinking I’d had a stroke, I went to the emergency room. The results were negative, but the pain never stopped.

I consulted a chiropractor, who told me my atlas was out. I didn’t have a clue what that meant, but at least I had a name for my problem. So I began seeing him weekly, sometimes twice a week. He ended most sessions by snapping my neck, which was so painful that at times I asked him not to do it. At my last visit to him, he snapped it and the same pain shot to my brain.

I went back to emergency, where the x-rays again showed nothing. Finally one doctor, noticing that I had a history of cancer, ordered an MRI. Although this was in April, I had to wait until the end of June for the appointment. I was told that the results would be sent to my doctor in four or five days. At 8:00 the very next morning, however, I received a call from the hospital, telling me to come to emergency. When I asked why, they wouldn’t say.

When I arrived at emergency two nurses hurriedly escorted me to a room and gave me a gown. Minutes later, two other nurses put me on a gurney, quickly put an IV in my hand, and shot me up with morphine. They still hadn’t told me what was going on. Because this was the Fourth of July weekend, there were no orthopedic or cancer doctors on staff. My own oncologist was in Las Vegas. Finally, after two days in the hospital, I saw an orthopedic surgeon, who told me that I had a lesion on my C2 vertebrae, which had two fractures, one of which was displaced. I didn’t know what a lesion was. I found out from my nurse that it was a tumor.

When my oncologist returned, he explained to me that my cancer had metastasized and that they could kill the tumor with radiation. I asked him to be up front with me. He said that my long-term chances for living were small. At this stage, most people live one to two years. Unlike my reaction to my last diagnosis, this time I was devastated, worried about being really sick and wasting away.

During my stay in the hospital, they tried two fine-needle biopsies to make sure it was breast cancer, but both failed. Instead, they had to go surgically through the front of my neck to core out the bone. It was breast cancer after all.

I had to wear a neck brace to restrict head movement and allow the fractures to heal and I was put on monthly IVs with a drug called Aridia. I was given radiation to kill the tumor. I’m not sure how many sessions I had—maybe 7, maybe 10—but many less than the 36 doses I had received for the original cancer, because there was a risk of my spinal cord bruising, which would cause paralysis.

I’d been an avid runner my whole life, and exercise had always been my most effective medication for depression. I would work out to the point of total exhaustion, and I always felt better for it. I’ve run three marathons and countless 10K and 5K races, always finishing in or near the top 10 percent of my age group. My surgeon now told me that exercise could kill me, as the bone that was displaced was very close to the spinal cord. If it moved and hit the cord, I would just stop breathing and fall.

The day I was released from the hospital, I went home, took off my brace, and walked six miles, crying all the way. I didn’t want to die like this. I especially didn’t want to die of a woman’s disease.

Friends suggested that I get other opinions, so I made an appointment at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, a renowned hospital in Michigan. They could see me in two weeks. I also made an appointment with Midwestern Regional Medical Center in Illinois, a cancer facility I had seen advertised on TV. This appointment was set almost immediately.

I arrived at Midwestern, located just three miles from the Wisconsin border, after a seven-hour drive. I stayed there for three days, taking every scan known to man. My results were evaluated by a board of several doctors. Their prognosis was similar to Dr. Folbe’s, except that the MRI showed an early-stage tumor on my C4 vertebrae, which they said could probably be dissolved with chemo. They also recommended a stem cell transplant, an experimental treatment that was sometimes successful in patients in advanced stages of their illness.

The key word to me was successful. Even if it was a shot in the dark, it offered a possibility of life and I was willing to try it. I drove home, canceled my appointment with Karmanos, and started packing for my trip back to the Cancer Center. I made that trip every month for eight months, staying four days each time. I stayed in the hospital the first time so they could watch me, but on later trips I stayed at a motel and went to the hospital every day for my chemo. I was put on two different chemicals, Adriamycin and Taxotere.

I became sick from the treatment almost immediately. It was like having the flu for eight months. I withdrew from my friends and family, and lived in a friend’s basement because I wanted privacy to deal with this illness alone. A friend bought me a German Shepherd pup, Sal, to keep me company and he played big part in helping me survive this illness. While house-training him, I was forced to walk up the stairs every hour to take him outside. A wonderful friend, he seemed to know I was not well and, when he wasn’t chewing my shoes or the carpet, he would show me the kind of love only man’s best friend could.

I returned to the hospital on the first of every month, and on the long drive home I would have to pull over on occasion to throw up. Lance, my bunker mate from Vietnam, lived in Indiana, so I would visit him for a couple hours to break up the trip. He felt so helpless, thinking I was going to die. We had gone through so much together during the war and we were very close.

Lance died last year from lung cancer. He would call me on occasion, crying, not wanting to die. I understood his feelings completely. I visited him several times before he passed and was honored to speak at his funeral. He was buried with full military honors, which he had earned.

The hospital had many chemo rooms and at each month’s treatment I would be put in a room with different people. Like me, almost every on of them had been told they were terminal and were there as a last ditch effort at life. I met people from all over the country who were on their fourth and fifth recurrence, who had been told that they would die many years before. Most were in good spirits; they talked about their families and their work and they had a positive outlook about the future. In a way, I started to look forward to my hospital visits. I quit feeling sorry for myself, now realizing that maybe this wasn’t the end.

My treatment was originally expected to take six months. In the sixth month, thinking it was the last, I started doing light workouts even though I was very weak. Sal and I had been walking every day all winter long. Now I started running a block and walking a block. Although it was very difficult, I was determined to be healthy once again. I also started lifting weights, easing into it and increasing slowly.

Towards the end of the sixth month, the hospital sent a request to my insurance company for the stem cell transplant. The insurance company quickly turned it down, stating that because it was experimental they would not fund it. The doctor extended my chemo another month to appeal the insurance company’s ruling.

Even with the side effects of the chemo, I kept up my workout program. When I was so tired and weak that I thought I couldn’t go on, Sal would pull me the rest of the way. I added a bike routine to my program. As sick as I was, I still had endorphins flying around in my brain and I could visualize myself being in top shape, feeling good again. I knew the hard times were coming to an end soon.

At the end of the seventh month, we still had no answer from the insurance company, and the doctor wanted to extend my chemo for another month. But I had had enough. I didn’t want to be sick anymore. I told the doctor that whatever happens happens. My last treatment was on the first of March.

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was in mid-April. My goal was to run the three miles nonstop without Sal’s help. I didn’t wear the pink shirt, but I did wear my pink number that day. People looked at me, trying to figure out why this guy was wearing pink. I went to the survivor’s breakfast before the race to get a cup of coffee, since it was a chilly morning. Although I was wearing my pink number, the two women at the door politely refused me entry, telling me that it was for survivors only. I told them that I was a survivor, that I had male breast cancer, and that all I wanted was a cup of coffee. Very apologetic, they let me through.

I had once, many years before, run a 5K race in Dallas with a time of 19:04. Knowing that, even at my best before my illness, I could probably never match that time, I still pushed my way to the front with all the jackrabbits. I didn’t belong there but I wanted a true and accurate finishing time. I started a little too fast and got very tired and weak before the first-mile marker. I managed to run to the second-mile marker before I had to stop and walk for awhile. I was sweating as if it were the middle of August. After walking a block or so, I finished the race running. I was devastated when I saw my finishing time—over 34 minutes. I thought I had been doing so well with my workouts.

After finishing, racers tear off the tag at the bottom of their numbers and hand it to a volunteer to be entered into the prize draws. The volunteer put mine in the stack of white tags. Again my heart sank. My number didn’t belong in that pile—it belonged with the pink tags. I’m a survivor! Doesn’t anybody get it? Soaked with sweat and freezing, I walked to my truck and went home.

After feeling depressed for a few days, I came to my senses. Just a few months before I could hardly walk up the basement steps, so finishing the race was really a giant step in my recovery.

By summer Sal and I were running six miles on most days. My hair was growing back and I was looking a little more presentable. I was in my second year now and wondering when the cancer would come back. I wasn’t so afraid of dying anymore, but now I was very concerned with my need to make amends to family and friends whom I might have hurt in the past. I apologized to my mom and sisters, whom I’d always been very close to, for crawling into a cave and shutting them out when I needed to deal with my illness on my own. I jumped into my car and drove to California to apologize to two of my children for not being the best father. I drove to Oregon to visit a good friend I wanted to see at least one more time.

In the back of my mind I felt the cancer was still there and would be paying me a visit again soon. After returning home, I suggested to a friend that we have a reunion with local friends we had grown up with. We scheduled the party for the first week in October, printed up flyers, called and emailed everyone we knew, and asked them to pass the word.

One of the people I emailed was Patricia, my very first girlfriend. We had met when she was 13 and I was 14 and we dated until I was almost 18 and already in the Marines. I apologized for disappointing and hurting her the last time I had seen her. I wanted her to know how sorry I was and how great it would be if she could make it to our party. Through a mutual friend she declined.

The party, with about 120 guests, was a great success. Friends traveled from all over the country and we had a great time. Mission accomplished! By this time I was in great shape and to look at me you would never have known I’d been sick.

About a month later, when some friends were over playing cards, the phone rang. It was Patricia. I told my friends to deal me out, and Patricia and I talked for two hours about our lives, our relationship as young lovers, family, kids—everything. It was by far the best phone call ever. Soon we started emailing each other. Then we went to dinner and a ballet. It wasn’t long before I moved out of my basement suite and into an apartment. Then, to be closer, Patricia moved into the apartment below me.

Since many of our old neighborhood and school friends had been unable to attend my party, Patricia and I held another one. This reunion was even bigger—over 200 people attended. Patricia and I were married at the beginning of the reunion, with all of our childhood friends as witnesses and my bunker mate Lance as best man. This June, Patricia and I will have been married five years and together for just over six.

It has been eight years and three months since my first surgery. I was on IV medication for over five years, first with chemo, then with Aredia, and then with Zometa. Early last year my doctor took me off Zometa, stating there were no signs of metastases in my body. For the most part, cancer now is just a memory. I admit I get a little nervous when I go for my scans, but I know that if the cancer does come back, I won’t go through it alone this time. I love my wife. I love my life.

Jimmy Fontella, a former Marine and combat veteran, lives in Michigan with his soul mate, Patricia. He loves his life and considers every day a gift.

Patricia Izzo, Photographer

www.IzzoPhotography.com

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