Donita Love

Breast Cancer

Love is more than a last name….

As Donita Love tells her poignant story of being diagnosed with breast cancer, her emotions are tightly intertwined with the sadness of her mother’s experience with the same disease as well as anxiety and concern for her sisters’ and daughters’ futures.

At the end of summer 2001 with her oldest daughter embarking on her first year away from home at college, Donita Love “knew” she had breast cancer. “As we packed my daughter up for college, I kept thinking I have to do something—you know . . . in your mind . . . you just know (when you have cancer).”

The 40-year-old Love started getting screening mammograms at age 32 when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She diligently reported for annual studies until three years before she was diagnosed herself. At the time of the mammogram three years earlier, “I said forget this because I was so nervous each time I went and got a mammogram. When they started calling me back in the room, I thought ‘I just can’t go through this.’”

Donita recalls the day she and her sisters took her mother to the Emergency Room at UT Medical Center—having “one of her spells where she could not breathe.” Her mother gathered the girls around her bed in the ER exam room and said, “While I can talk—while you all are around me, I want you to know that early detection is the best thing against any disease.” Donita’s mother made her daughters promise one-by-one to take care of themselves. So even though the sisters live far apart (Alcoa, Fla., Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn.), they stay in close touch, and once each year, “we always ask . . . you had that mammogram?” Donita states.

With her daughter settled in college, the “voice of her mother inside her” insisted that Donita go to the doctor. Donita resolved to get her mammogram and deal with the situation. She had a mammogram at the University Breast Center and even though the study appeared normal, Dr. Kathleen Hudson did an ultrasound. Donita remembers thinking, “I know it’s there.” While watching the screen during the ultrasound of the lump, Donita noticed different shapes and sizes—when she saw that cluster, she said, “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Linda Cruze, R.N., a breast health specialist in the UT Breast Care Service, provided education and resources. From diagnosis at the University Breast Center through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Donita praises her physicians for their thorough, competent and compassionate care. She says about selecting her surgeon, “I had heard a lot of good about Dr. (John L.) Bell when I used to draw blood on the inpatient oncology floor. I always said if I end up with cancer ... he’s going to be my doctor.”

Following lumpectomy, Donita consulted with medical oncologist Dr. Tim Panella and received chemotherapy on Fridays in order to be off on the weekends. She underwent radiation treatments under the direction of Dr. Robert Bertoli at 8 a.m. weekdays in order to report for work on time at 9:30 a.m. Memories of her mother’s treatment helped guide Donita. “I studied her—just put it that way,” she remembers. “I wanted to be on top of it—if it ever happened to one of my sisters or anybody I loved—I wanted to be able to say, ‘Why don’t you try this? Talk to this doctor. Talk to this person.”

Throughout her medical journey, Donita insisted that her daughters know all the details. “My husband is a very quiet man. He said I was too forward with it. He thought I ought to not worry them about it, but I felt like it was the time when they needed to know something—especially, during the times when they were in school so they wouldn’t worry about me. They knew the things I had to do.” Donita felt that her daughter living at home—being with her and helping take care of her—had an easier time than the daughter away at college.

Donita still feels a special “kinship” with her mother—saying they are very much alike. Her mother worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at UT Medical Center until her disease limited her ability to breathe. Donita is a phlebotomist in the laboratory and one of her sisters is an LPN in Florida. Donita says “It seems like slowly, but surely our family is seeing what mama loved about medicine—taking care of people and everything.”

When asked—If you had one thing you were going to say to women—whether it is your sister, daughter, friend at work or somebody else you know, what would you say about your cancer experience? Donita responds, “Even though it was devastating news, it was a good experience to learn that if you just think about yourself and your body—how good you want to feel, you have to work at it, and I say it has kind of helped me and my family grow closer together. That’s the best I can say—it has helped me to be here longer with my loved ones and meet more people who are going to come down the path sooner or later that I feel like I have got a story to tell and it’s worth telling if it helps somebody else.” To help carry out her personal mission regarding “what her purpose is,” Donita volunteers with the UT Cancer Institute’s C.A.R.E. Program.

Clearly through her mother’s loving guidance and example, Donita Love has experienced much joy by dedicating her life experiences—especially with breast cancer—to caring for others and teaching her loved ones also to care for themselves.