Making It a Positive Diagnosis

The room was filled with hope and sisterhood, and together they pushed fear into the corners as more than 400 women, half of them breast cancer survivors, met Sunday to celebrate one another and life.

The most poignant moment, in a day that included talks on everything from the law to medicine, came when Corinne Beacham Greene, 45, of Laguna Beach accepted an award as Orange County’s most inspirational cancer survivor.

Greene, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago, delivered a message of perseverance and rebirth as she showed slides of her family growing up over the last decade. Greene, more than most, knows firsthand the long shadow the disease casts. Six months ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, underwent major surgery and is in the midst of chemotherapy.

“It is important to be looking toward the future, to always be going forward,” Greene told the annual Survivors Tea and Symposium hosted in Newport Beach by the Orange County chapter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Her children were 3 and 8 when she learned she had breast cancer. Since then, her daughter has started UC Berkeley, and her son became a bar mitzvah last year.

“We worry about what will happen tomorrow,” said Greene, who wore a fashionable straw hat on her bald head. “What’s more important is what is happening today. To be wholly in the present. I never miss one of my kids’ events.”

The fear of a recurrence haunts breast cancer survivors. Many said they came to the meeting and have joined one of the support groups organized by the Komen Foundation because it is the best way to cope with their fears and to learn from others who have taken the “cancer journey.”

“You feel vulnerable,” said Penny Weise, 51, of Newport Beach, who had surgery last year.

Others agreed.

“There is fear of the unknown,” said Sandy Finestone, 56, of Irvine. “You don’t know what’s ahead of you. But the overriding thing is you don’t feel safe anymore. The body has let you down.”

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among U.S. women, after lung cancer. About 180,000 women will be diagnosed with the disease this year, and 43,500 will die, according to the National Cancer Institute. In Orange County, one in seven women will will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their life, according to the Komen Foundation.

The foundation, which was founded in 1982, is one of the leading funders of cancer research nationwide. Its local supports education, low-cost mammograms and other programs for woman and breast cancer survivors.

Many survivors come every year to the tea, which has more than doubled in attendance since it was first held six years ago. There is celebration and sadness, but there also is self-empowerment and learning from others, said several people.

“This is not ground you need to walk alone,” Iris Caceras, 62, of Huntington Beach said. “I celebrate every day of my life, and I am so happy to have the family and friends I have and the people I have met because I have cancer.”

She described going to a support group after getting her diagnosis five years ago as a turning point.

“I couldn’t drag one foot in front of the other,” she said. “But I found courage there. What I have gone through is nothing compared to them. It teaches you that it is doable.”

Greene’s award was in recognition for years of service including helping set up a support group for children of cancer survivors, twice organizing the annual Race for the Cure and helping create a retreat program for women cancer patients.

One challenge of being diagnosed so young was that there were relatively few role models, Greene said. That in part inspired her commitment to help others.

Looking around the room before giving her speech, Greene remarked about all the people she had met because of her cancer.

“We’ve lost so many,” she said. “The need for research is so incredible.”