Breast-cancer survivor wants women to be vigilant and check

Shaye Siegel Arluk still vividly recalls the day she felt a lump in her breast five years ago.

The Virginia Beach woman had just finished 13 months of breast-feeding, so the knot in her breast wasn't unusual. She'd had a blocked milk duct before and been able to loosen and clear it with a warm shower.

But this time the lump didn't budge.

"This was harder. It felt more like a ball," Arluck said. "I just had this really bad feeling. "

She tried to show it to her husband, a gastroenterologist. He urged her to make an appointment with her obstetrician instead.

"I had a sense something was wrong," said Glen Arluk. "I just wanted to be a husband, not a doctor."

Arluk detected the lump on a Sunday. She called her OB the next day, had a biopsy taken Friday and learned it tested positive for breast cancer a week later.

The news was especially shocking to Arluk, a nutritionist with a master's degree in exercise physiology. She t eaches dance classes for fun and had always maintained a rigorous daily workou t and healthy diet.

"I had breast cancer at 30 with zero family history, no risk factors," Arluk said. "I actually had the negative-risk factors. I had a child before the age of 30. I was breast feeding, ate a high-fiber, low-fat diet. I had no family history, and I don't have the gene.

"I'm still young and am healthy, but it still did happen to me. So it can happen to young people, " she said.

That's what Arluk wants people - especially young women - to know. Always be vigilant because breast cancer can happen to anyone.

In January, Arluk, 35, modeled in a Norfolk bridal show to help raise money for breast cancer research and education. She also counsels young women newly diagnosed with breast cancer and is a resource for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, offering advice to women through the nonprofit's local affiliate.

After discovering her lump, Arluk learned her tumor had grown beyond the breast tissue. She ha d a lumpectomy, during which her tumor, the sentinel lymph node and 19 other nodes surrounding the tumor were removed.

"So they felt they had gotten the source," said Arluk, who also completed six months of chemotherapy and had mammograms, MRIs and C T scans.

After that, her doctors couldn't find a trace of cancer cells. They told her she was fine.

"But I didn't feel fine," Arluk recalled. "I couldn't sleep at night. I was having nightmares of dying and leaving behind Brianna (her daughter). I went back to my surgeon and said, 'I know this sounds crazy, but I feel we need to be more aggressive with my surgeries.' I asked for the bilateral mastectomy that summer, and I had it in the fall."

Some doctors may have tried to counsel Arluk from having the surgery to remove both breasts, since she was seemingly cancer-free, but her doctor told her he respected her intuition.

After a double mastectomy, her doctors had startling news.

"When they came back after doing my pathology, my doctor told me I had saved my own life," she said. Lurking deep in the removed breast tissues have been more cancer cells.

"You have to be so proactive with your health care," she said. "My advice to people is just to fight for it.

Arluk said she never takes "no" for an answer and describes herself as an "out-of-the-box thinker." So when doctors advised her against having future pregnancies - because it could start her hormone-induced cancer again - she knew there'd be a way to have more children one day.

And she did. Three years ago, a surrogate mother - using Arluk and her husband's embryos - gave birth to the couples' twins, Madison and Dylan.

"We always wanted a sibling for Brianna (now 7)," Arluk said. "And we didn't want the cancer to stop that. Now she has two siblings."

Arluk has been cancer-free for five years. She remains vigilant, however, and sees an oncologist several times a year. Ever the optimist, Arluk said there's a silver lining to getting the disease.

"I've truly helped other people. It's definitely an amazing feeling that you can help save someone else's life, or assist them in doing it," she said.

Rita Frankenberry, (757) 222-5102, rita.frankenberry@pilotonline.com