SHERMAN, Texas (KXII) – As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, a local survivor has a simple message: don\u2019t skip your mammogram. She says one appointment is the reason she\u2019s alive today.<\/p>\n
When patients see Natalie Carpenter coming with a needle, they aren\u2019t always happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re like ugh, I\u2019m like, It\u2019s just a needle. I\u2019m not like removing a body part,\u201d said Carpenter.<\/p>\n
Natalie has been a phlebotomist for seven years, following in her mother\u2019s footsteps. She had no family history of cancer, so she was shocked when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 49.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I knew in my head was what I\u2019ve seen on TV or movies, and that\u2019s pretty scary,\u201d Carpenter said. \u201cI thought I was going to be on death\u2019s door. It was terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI called my mom, my primary care doctor works here, she actually left clinic and came down with the biopsy results ,and told me that it was cancer. I continued to work,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n
Carpenter didn\u2019t just work through the diagnosis. She worked through six months of chemo and thirty rounds of radiation, all due to a tumor less than a centimeter in size, and cancer in her lymph nodes too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked full-time. Everybody here was amazing,\u201d said Carpenter. \u201cThe support was unbelievable, and then radiation, everyday I would come to work, leave work, drive to Denison, have them radiate me for like five minutes and come back to work.\u201d <\/p>\n
Because Natalie provides the insurance for her family, she felt she had no choice but to keep showing up, even on her hardest days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of my fears when they told me chemo. \u2018Oh my God how am I going to work? How am I going to have insurance to treat this?\u2019. It was a lot,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n
The cancer took its emotional and physical toll-<\/p>\n
\u201cI did it all. Lost all the hair. Eyebrows, eyelashes even inside your nose. Hair you don\u2019t even think about,\u201d said Carpenter. \u201cI meant at Halloween I was completely bald like a cue ball. I told my husband \u2018I could be Uncle Fester for Halloween.\u2019 He told me babe don\u2019t talk about yourself like that, but I\u2019m like I have to or I\u2019m going to cry.\u201d <\/p>\n
That positive attitude stayed with her. Today, Natalie is cancer-free.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m more tired than I was before,\u201d said Carpenter. \u201cEverybody\u2019s journey is different.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just kicked its butt! I kicked cancer\u2019s butt,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n
She credits her family and coworkers for helping her win the fight, but she says the real hero was the routine screening that caught the cancer early.<\/p>\n
\u201cMammograms saved my life!\u201d Carpenter said. \u201cYeah I knew they were important before, but now I\u2019m just like, \u2018Get a mammogram! Get a mammogram!\u2019 They don\u2019t hurt. They\u2019re just a few minutes out of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KXII. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHERMAN, Texas (KXII) – As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, a local survivor has a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[72679,49,48,84,251133,325811,121379],"class_list":["post-952766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-breast-cancer-awareness","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-mammograms","tag-sherman-medical-center","tag-smc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}