For better or worse

The annual Komen Seattle Race for the Cure begins today at 7 a.m. at Safeco Field. About 20,000 people are expected to participate, raising $1 million. One of the participants is Camille Burke, a 48-year-old pharmacist from Normandy Park, who is battling breast cancer. It's a disease that has had a huge effect not only on her, but also on those in her family. Here is their story.

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That such a tiny little thing could turn into such a life-altering event, into such a presence that would prove the strength of their love; well, who knew?

It was November 1999 and Camille Burke, pharmacist, wife of auto-body technician Frank and mother of two, was in the shower when she found the lump - the dot, really - in her breast.

It was but a nubbin, barely the size of the tip of her pinky finger. So small she could feel it only when lathered up with soap, when her fingers slid more easily over the skin.

"I always thought if you found something in the breast, you'd have a sinking feeling in your stomach," she says. "But I didn't because I didn't think it was anything."

Plus, her sister-in-law had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. "Statistically, what are the odds that I'd get it, too?" Camille remembers thinking.

She thought nothing more of it. But later that month, when a bout of pneumonia sent her to the doctor's office, she asked for a quick opinion. The doctor wasn't even all that impressed with it, Camille recalls, but made an appointment for a mammogram anyway.

When the one-hour scheduled appointment turned into a five-hour mammogram with biopsy - that's when Camille figured something was up.

Sure enough, the next day the diagnosis came: ductal carcinoma. Camille had breast cancer.

Her first thought: that she'd have to dig up more information on this breast cancer thing. It was all still so unreal.

"It's a long road we have to go down," Frank said to his wife when she called him with the news. It was still unreal to him, too.

`What if I die?'

It wasn't until they got in the car a week later for their first appointment with a breast surgeon that the thought slammed them both. Hard. Oh, my God, this is real.

They sat silently in the Chevy Blazer, Frank driving, Camille lost in the frenetic whirl of her own thoughts:

What's going to happen?

I hate surgery.

What if I don't come out of the anesthesia?

What if I die?

Who's going to take care of the children?

Maybe it's not too bad.

Maybe they'll get the lump out quickly.

OK, now I'm hyperventilating.

Slow down the breathing. Sloooow it down.

Now I'm not breathing enough.

Breathe!

Frank was deluged with his own torrent of thoughts:

What does this mean?

How serious is this?

Where do we go from here?

Is the doctor going to tell us she has only six months left?

What am I going to do if something goes wrong and I have to raise the kids myself?

Each tried to protect the other from the swirling chaos.

But through it all, one clear thought came to both: "We'll manage. We'll get through it together."

`I do'

"For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part."

Frank was 22 when he heard those words. Camille was 31. It was April 9, 1983 - the first marriage for both.

It hadn't been love at first sight. Their first meeting, two years before their wedding, had been set up by Frank's mother, who worked with Camille at a pharmacy.

"But he's 20!" Camille thought. "Where am I going to go with this kid - McDonald's?"

Well, actually Longacres. Frank's parents and her co-workers at the pharmacy organized a celebratory dinner for Camille's graduation from pharmacy school. It was also Frank and Camille's first date.

"I was mortified," Camille says. "He paid for dinner! I felt like I was taking advantage of this poor kid and there's no romantic interest."

After that dinner, they didn't really keep in touch.

But when Camille's sister had an extra ticket for a group outing to "The Nutcracker" ballet and Camille needed a date, she remembered Frank. What the heck.

There was something about him that charmed her. His dry sense of humor. His groundedness. The way he was soooo nervous, practically knocking over a little old lady waiting for a prescription, when he went to the pharmacy to ask her out on a skiing date.

So she went. He treated her well, so well. Kindly, with great thoughtfulness and maturity. He was the only guy she'd dated, she says, whom she could imagine standing with in front of friends and family members and saying "I do."

They got married, in a church in West Seattle, on a drizzly day that kept brightening up.

"Do you take each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?" the minister asked.

"I do."

"I do."

You can't hide

"Better or worse, sickness and health."

Frank took to affectionately teasing Camille with that phrase around December last year - after the doctor's diagnosis came.

The doctor thought it was Stage I breast cancer - a 1.8-centimeter tumor with no discernible cancerous lymph nodes. They scheduled surgery for Jan. 4.

Camille had always teased her husband, saying, when she wanted him to do something like wash the dishes, that "it's in the fine print of our marriage certificate - didn't you read it?"

Now Frank teased her. "I guess I have to stay in this marriage," he'd say. "The certificate says for better or worse, in sickness and in health, doesn't it?"

"That's right, honey," she'd reply. "There's no way out."

Not that Frank wanted any.

He told his wife to rest, slow down, take it easy. He took the kids to the park, to go bike riding, so she could get some quiet time. He'd unplug the phone by the bed, so she wouldn't be disturbed. He called her friends to let them know how she was doing.

Little things like that.

When Camille went for her lumpectomy, the doctors discovered that two of her lymph nodes were cancerous. Two days later, she got another call from the doctor's office. The tumor, which they thought was about 1.8 cm, was actually 3.3 cm. And the lumpectomy had not created a clear margin in the breast - an area without malignant tumors. Camille would have to return to surgery.

"My first thought was: `No!' " she recalls. "I hadn't even recovered from the first surgery and they're telling me to go in again."

That was only the beginning of procedures that didn't quite get rid of all the cancer, of going back for more tests, surgeries, bloodwork, chemotherapy - the list was endless.

"When I first found out, I thought that they'd just take out the lump, then do six weeks of radiation, and it'd be all over and done with," Camille says.

It hardly turned out that way. After the second surgery, she still didn't have a clear margin. The doctor said she would have to have a mastectomy. They started her on chemotherapy first - four rounds of three different drugs every 21 days, to begin with.

It seemed every few days, they'd get another call from the doctor, saying another thing had happened. Their stomachs started sinking each time the phone rang.

"After a while, I began to think we'd never find the bottom to start coming back up from," Frank says.

He was by Camille's side for just about every test, every procedure. He went to their children's school after each surgery to tell the kids that their mother was fine. They talked about having her niece's family take the kids should anything happen to the both of them. They kept each other from going too far down that path of gloom and doom.

"There are times when you just want to go hide," Camille says.

"But you can't," Frank says. "There's no rock big enough to hide under. You've got to go through."

It's not fair

Camille and Frank told the children their mother had breast cancer during the holidays. "It was really awful to have to tell your kids, especially right before Christmas," Camille says.

The kids - Anjouli, 9 and George, 7 - were already well-acquainted with cancer. Their 4-year-old cousin had leukemia. Other cousins had other forms of cancer: multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer.

"I never let them think that there wasn't any chance of me dying," Camille says. "That wasn't fair to them because there's always that possibility. I don't think you do any favors by protecting kids too much from things they should know."

Anjouli started asking why, crying that it wasn't fair.

Later, they mulled, turning things over in their 9-year-old and 7-year-old brains.

"Mommy, does this mean that because you have breast cancer that I'll have it, too?" Anjouli would ask.

The kids got used to seeing Camille tired, attached to tubes, her hair falling out.

It became part of the warp and weft of life for them.

George would leave for school in the morning, yelling from the door: "Goodbye, Mommy, I hope you don't die!"

Labor and love

Around January, when every phone call from the doctor brought grimmer and grimmer news, Camille and Frank thought about selling their house.

Camille was too tired to work and would soon quit her job. It would be extremely hard for them to pay the mortgage along with other expenses on only one income.

They had bought their light-filled house in Normandy Park five years ago.

Four bedrooms, 4,000 square feet.

More important: hardwood floors of oak with cherry perimeter, cherry wood desk and shelves, a deck - all built weekend by weekend, year by year, by Frank. He had also built a bar, torn out and redone the kitchen cabinets, built an elaborate swing set in the yard.

Camille had painted the walls, decorated the house, planted roses, foxgloves, brown-eyed Susans, herbs.

The house required the labor - and income - of both of them.

"And if one of us is gone, there wouldn't be enough money to pay for expenses," Camille says.

But . . .

There was so much stress involved in putting a house on the market, in moving.

They didn't want to uproot the children.

And the house - well, it was a house built on labor and love. It was the symbol of their love, their life, built year by year.

They decided to stay.

Going to extremes

Early this year, Camille decided to have a double mastectomy.

She found out she had a one-in-12 chance of cancer recurring on the other side if only one breast was removed.

"Choosing between your breasts and your life, well, that's easy," Camille says. "If I have to have something cut off from my body, better my breasts than my arms or legs."

She went in for her double mastectomy in August.

"My mom's getting her boobs cut off," George would inform people.

When she awoke after surgery, she was relieved she wasn't too sore. She wondered what she looked like.

Frank looked at the sunken cavity of his wife's chest and thought: "God, it's a total mutilation of a woman's body! Why did they have to go to such extremes?"

But all he said to her was: "It's not that bad."

At home, he matter-of-factly helped her drain the fluids that accumulated in the area after the surgery.

"Saying that, and doing the drains, acting like he wasn't totally appalled - his reaction helped me be braver in looking at this stuff," Camille says.

She's looking forward to reconstructive surgery, when the doctor will take the fat from her stomach and move it to the chest area to construct new breasts.

Hey, she wouldn't mind going from her former A cup to a C cup.

"I knew there was a good reason I have this tummy fat," she says, patting her curvy belly.

A search for normalcy

There's still joy, even in this turbulent year.

The family took a trip to Disneyland in May.

"We wanted the kids to have one good memory in this year of ugly memories," Camille says.

Anjouli was the only one who wanted to go on the Extreme Scream, a ride that bounces its riders up and down. The rest of the family had had enough wild rides for the year.

And today, Camille is walking a mile in the Race for the Cure with her 81-year-old mother (whose sister died of breast cancer); her cousin, a breast-cancer survivor; and several friends.

"We'll be the noisy bunch," she says.

This week, Camille starts her radiation treatments - five times a week for six weeks. After the lumpectomies, there was still a 70 percent chance of cancer recurring. Now, with everything she's done, that chance is down to 18 percent.

"We've been on a roller coaster where you can't get off till the end of the ride. Hopefully, we're getting to where the dips aren't so bad now," Camille says.

Only problem is, they're still not sure. A few weeks ago, her doctor detected another small lump. There may well be another surgery. Even after all that, the future is still uncertain.

But Camille and Frank both know that.

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Facts about the Komen Race for the Cure:

-- The annual Komen Seattle Race for the Cure begins at 7 a.m. at Safeco Field.

-- The fund-raising goal this year is $1 million.

-- The Race for the Cure was founded in 1982; the eventis held annually in 109 U.S. cities and two foreign countries this year.

-- The foundation was established by Nancy Brinker to honor the memory of her sister, Susan G. Komen, who died of breast cancer at age 36.

-- Seventy-five percent of the proceeds from the Komen Seattle Race for the Cure will fund local breast health education projects and grants.

Facts about breast cancer:

-- A woman's chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime is one in eight.

-- Every three minutes a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

-- Every 12 minutes a woman dies from breast cancer.

-- By the end of the decade, approximately 1.8 million women and 12,000 men will have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

-- This year an estimated 178,700 women and 1,600 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. About 43,500 women and men will die from it.

-- Breast cancer is second only to lung cancer in cancer deaths.

-- For women ages 35-54, breast cancer is the leading cause of death.

-- Early detection is the key to beating breast cancer. When the disease is confined to the breast, the five-year survival rate is 97 percent.

-- A mammogram is the best way to detect breast cancer in its earliest stages. Early detection offers the best chance of survival.

-- For more breast health information, call the Komen Foundation at 800-I'M-AWARE, or visit the Web site at: www.breastcancerinfo.com.

Source: Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

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