“But I haven’t cried once since getting my wig. I feel like they gave me more than just a wig – they gave me physical peace.”
The year began with Sarah leaving Huntsville Hospital for a new nursing job at North Alabama Specialty Hospital, a long-term acute care facility on Governors Drive. (She returned to HH in May).
As is standard practice in the health care industry, she was required to take a tuberculin skin test.
When the purified protein solution injected under her skin caused a mild rash, doctors sent Sarah for a chest X-ray.
The X-ray didn’t find any evidence of tuberculosis, and she was cleared to start work.
Despite being given a clean bill of health, Sarah, ever the nurse, was curious to see the image of her heart and lungs. She logged into the patient portal and clicked on her X-ray. The radiologist had noted her aorta appeared abnormally wide. Sarah thought so, too, and showed the image to a physician at work.
The doctor said it was probably nothing to be worried about but suggested Sarah go see a cardiologist – just to be safe.
The cardiologist, Dr. Phillip Laney at Huntsville Hospital Heart Center, ordered a CT (computed tomography) scan of Sarah’s heart. To everyone’s surprise, it showed a six-centimeter mass between her heart and chest wall.
“At this point, I certainly wasn’t thinking cancer,” Sarah said. “I had no symptoms and my labs were completely normal.”
Even so, she was referred to Clearview Cancer Institute for further tests. When a biopsy was inconclusive, Sarah’s oncologist, Dr. Wes Smith, recommended she have the mass surgically removed.
Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Paul Speicher, who Sarah knows well from working in the Cardiovascular ICU, performed the delicate, 2 ½-hour operation. The next day, he came to her hospital room with news she never expected to hear:
You have Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Sarah tried her best to focus on the positive: her cancer was caught early and responds well to treatment; the five-year survival rate for Hodgkin’s lymphoma is almost 90 percent.
On September 25, Sarah had the first of six chemotherapy treatments at Huntsville Hospital. Her nursing friends brought encouraging notes and themed gift baskets to try to cheer her up.
Sarah is also married to a nurse – husband Sean Eberle works in HH’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
“My work family is literally incredible,” she said. “They’ve been in my corner from the moment I got sick.
“The type of nursing we do is hard and pretty high stress, but that also helps bring you together.”
Sarah thought she was prepared to lose her hair, but seeing it happen was worse than she imagined. “Your hair is such a big part of your identity and a physical representation of everything that cancer takes,” she said.
