Shirley Overton had decided two things when she gave birth to her fourth child back in 2021.
This was going to be her last child, and she was going to breastfeed.
That second decision led to her first noticing that something was off with her body.
“I was noticing that the baby was not latching to my right breast. She would latch to my left breast, but she would not latch to my right breast,” Overton told The Enterprise-Tocsin during an interview at the Delta Cotton Belles’ annual survivor luncheon, which was held at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Indianola this month.
Overton said she had done routine self-checks in the past, and she performed one when the breastfeeding trend persisted.
That is when she noticed a lump.
“I called my OBGYN immediately,” Overton said.
An ultrasound was ordered.
“She called me within that day of having the ultrasound, and she said that the ultrasound was disturbing, but she really couldn’t say, because I would need further testing,” she said.
She was referred to Dr. Robert Blake in Cleveland, who performed a biopsy.
The news that followed was what she had feared, and it began a long journey that included a fight against COVID-19, sepsis and a stroke on top of her treatments.
The news, at first, was not as devastating. It was Stage 1 to begin with.
“I had decided to keep my breast,” Overton said. “(Blake) decided we would go into surgery right away.”
She was scheduled for surgery in October of 2021, while her new baby was turning four months old.
The mass was removed, but the doctors wanted to do tests on her lymph nodes. That is when the news got worse.
“Tested five of my lymph nodes, and five of my lymph nodes tested positive for cancer,” Overton said. “Of course, it went from being Stage 1 to Stage 3.”
Overton said she was not prepared for that news. It was a hormonal cancer, she said, which meant it would grow rapidly if left untreated.
“I’m shocked, and I don’t really know what to do,” she said. “I’m just devastated at this point, because I’m told it was Stage 1 and a couple of months later it’s Stage 3.”
This meant aggressive chemotherapy treatments and then aggressive radiation.
The chemo started, and as with many patients, it made Overton very sick.
On top of that, she contracted COVID-19, which left her immobile.
“It took my ability to walk,” Overton said. “They were trying to figure out why I couldn’t walk anymore, and they never did come to a conclusion.”
With her baby just a few months old, and with three other kids to take care of, Overton was admitted to the hospital for a long stay, mostly due to the fact that she had become septic.
“I was so sick, I had to be hospitalized. I think I was hospitalized for about a month, maybe two months in Greenwood in relation to COVID,” she said. “The doctors there said COVID was so bad on me because of the chemo treatments I was taking.”
Overton eventually had to have multiple blood transfusions, and at one point, she suffered a stroke.
“That little period of time, my baby was just a couple of months old, so on top of that, I’m dealing with postpartum too,” she said. “I’m not really connecting with the baby the way that I should be because I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.”
Overton said the baby’s father, Jerome Allen Sr., stepped up, as well as her mother, to make sure that the baby was taken care of. They also became Overton’s caretaker.
Things eventually got better.
She stopped chemo treatments long enough to allow her body to heal.
Overton also went into physical therapy to learn how to walk again.
She finished radiation treatments about six months ago.
“Once I got better, I went through the treatment process, and now I am great,” Overton said.
She has returned to work as well at Indianola-based North Yalobusha Hospice & Palliative Care.
Overton said one of the reasons she was able to make it through, financially, was with help from Delta Cotton Belles.
“Financially, they helped out a lot, being able to go back and forth every week for my treatments,” she said. “When it was time for me to have radiation, I think I had 32 rounds of radiation, and it wasn’t a day that came that I was not able to get there as far as gas and different women reaching out to me letting me know that I wasn’t alone.”
She said just having people to talk to, especially other women who shared similar experiences, was helpful.
Today, she is helping to spread the word to other women about the importance of self-checks and mammograms.
“When I talk to women of my age, a lot of us feel that we’re so young, we’re not thinking we can get breast cancer,” Overton said. “You can be as young as 18 or 20 years old and have breast cancer. For any woman, always keep check on yourself. If you’re feeling a certain way or you see a lump that you know wasn’t there at first, don’t put it off. Go and seek medical attention right away. It’s better to find out and do something about it right then instead of it progressing to where you can’t do anything about it.”
