Susan Campbell was born in Wichita, Kansas. When she was a child, her grandmother enrolled her in the Citizen Band Potawatomi Tribe, now known as the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In 1958 her family relocated to Seattle, where she grew to adulthood, attended community college, and married Eric; together they have raised three children: Douglas, Jeremy, and Rhian. In 1988, Susan graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a B.A. in biblical studies/theology. In 1987 she became an associate pastor in a small American Baptist church but in 1992 she resigned and started a new job as regional representative for her tribe. After her husband’s retirement, they traveled for five months, returning home to pack their belongings and relocate to the island of Kaua’i in 1999, where she and Eric live with two feral cats they adopted and socialized, Koa and Nani.

She has published a book of her Potawatomi genealogy titled One Woman’s Family and the Footprints It Left Behind, based on 30 years of genealogical research; a book (with historian Shirley Willard) titled Potawatomi Trail of Death—1838 Removal from Indiana to Kansas, about a forced removal of a village of Potawatomi Indians, including members of her family; and a book of poetry titled Stained Glass Windows. As a public speaker she has informed thousands of people about Potawatomi history and values. She also conducts training sessions for team captains of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and serves as a volunteer and county coordinator/dispatcher for the Society’s Reach to Recovery Program. She is currently at work on a biography of a Mohawk/Cayuga elder.

   In June 2002, I was in the process of prepping for a bilateral knee replacement to be performed in August. One of the requirements before surgery was a complete physical, which, of course, included a mammogram. I hadn’t had one for about three years but they had all been normal to that point, so I thought nothing of it—until I got a phone call from my doctor telling me they’d found some abnormalities and needed the report of my previous mammogram for comparison.

    The comparison confirmed that there were indeed some changes, which might or might not be breast cancer, so I was scheduled for a second mammogram. I still wasn’t too concerned because breast cancer does not run in my family (although I’ve learned since that a great-grandmother may have had the disease, but it was never confirmed). After the second mammogram and then a needle biopsy, I was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a contained cancer that usually requires no treatment after a lumpectomy. But when I was asked how I wanted to proceed, for some reason I opted for a mastectomy instead, which was performed in July.

    It was only after the mastectomy, when I was in the process of having the staples removed, that I learned that while I did indeed have DCIS, I also had a 6 millimeter tumor, the size of a pencil eraser, which had not been detected by the mammogram and had already spread to one node. I was referred to an oncologist for treatment and told I was a Stage IIA. At this point I was in an absolute panic, scared beyond belief.

    After I learned I would need to get chemotherapy and radiation because of the aggressiveness of this small tumor, I visited the American Cancer Society on our island to seek more information (I live on the island of Kaua’i in the state of Hawai’i). There I encountered a survivor who calmed my fears by telling me she’d been diagnosed 10 years prior with a Stage IV tumor—invasive cancer—and told to go home and get her affairs in order. She walked me through the treatment every step of the way and in the process became my good friend.

    I won’t say that chemo was a picnic; those who have experienced it know better. But new drugs helped tremendously with the nausea. My tastes changed daily throughout the entire six months of chemotherapy. My daughter, who had moved over from Seattle to assist me, and my husband were hard put to find foods I could or would eat. I was hospitalized twice during this period with a white count so low as to be almost non-existent. Each time I bounced back with the help of medications.

    While we can receive chemo on Kaua’i, we don’t have a radiation facility, so my husband and I traveled to Honolulu, where I checked in to Kuakini Hospital and the adjacent apartments they’d built for off-island patients. There we lived for the six weeks of radiation. The apartments—right down to the bathroom linens—were very beige. I needed color! Our daughter painted a rainbow to hang above the dining room table, my husband bought a framed print of a beach similar to our favorite beach back home, and I bought a bright red bath mat. And so we survived our stay in our temporary home.

    We decided to look upon our time in Honolulu as a vacation, so after I finished my morning treatments we’d hop the paratransit bus (because of my knees I used a wheelchair for trips beyond the apartment) and travel to the mall or a movie or the aquarium or the Bishop Museum. At a nearby library, I stayed in touch with friends and family through email and had a constant supply of new reading materials. The major side effect of radiation is a feeling of tiredness after the first few weeks, so with the nausea of chemo a thing of the past, I enjoyed the bakery a few blocks from the apartment as well as the local shave ice store. One of the radiation nurses exchanged books with me, while another provided me with a CD of the soundtrack to Chicago, a movie my husband and I had just seen.

    I returned to Kaua’i with a clean bill of health, and although I’ve had a few scares since then—one leading to a second mastectomy in August 2003 (which turned out to be unnecessary after all, but I’ve never regretted it) and another an upswing in a blood count that apparently was related to a virus I was fighting—I still have a clean bill of health. I’m feeling great, full of energy and ready to take off at a moment’s notice, whether to the beach or to a bead store.

    The volunteer and I are still friends. We no longer put cancer first in our lives; we are both genealogists and delight in sharing our latest finds. She’s passed the 15-year mark now and couldn’t be healthier.

    As for me, I appreciate every day so much more. I know how much my family loves me after witnessing the sacrifices they were all willing to make on my behalf. I have friends—good friends—I’d never have met if I hadn’t gone through this. I now serve as the county dispatcher for the Reach to Recovery program, a service of the American Cancer Society provided to newly diagnosed breast cancer patients at no charge. I co-lead the Talk Story group, our monthly cancer support group. I teach Relay for Life team captains how to talk to others about cancer. And I laugh more. I take time to do the things I enjoy doing. I even had my first book published in 2003 and self-published a second one in 2008, neither of them about cancer. I spend more time with my family, just being together. And I’m so much stronger than I ever thought possible.

     By the way, I did get those new knees in February 2004. My orthopedist told me I far exceeded his expectations for recovery, but I’d come through cancer; after that, knee replacement and the therapy that followed were a breeze!

    I was told at the beginning of this journey that it would turn out to be a positive experience in my life. I certainly didn’t believe that then, but now, over six years after my diagnosis, I can agree.