LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Loni Eads’ life changed in June, when her normal mammogram exam came back with unexpected results. She’s now encouraging other women to get screenings sooner rather than later.
“I will never forget what June 24th felt like for me and my family.”
Loni Eads made her way to Lubbock in 2005 after she was accepted into graduate school at Texas Tech, where she met her husband. They now have two daughters together.
Eads says Lubbock has treated her family very well these past 21 years and always thought of herself as a healthy person.
“I went for my yearly mammogram, I’ve done it every year since i was 40,” Eads said. “I never had any problems and it doesn’t run in my family.”
After the mammogram, Eads was told more imaging would be needed. One sonogram and biopsy later, Eads learned the news she has stage 2A breast cancer.
“It honestly was completely earth-shattering,” Eads said. “It was an out of body experience.”
While that diagnosis hit the Eads family hard, there’s some good that came out of it. Because doctors were able to detect the cancer sooner, Eads had a lymphadenectomy last month to take out some of her lymph nodes and remove the cancer from her body.
A pathologist found Eads had clear margins following the surgery, meaning she no longer has cancer cells on the outer edge of the surgically removed tissue. Because of this, she’ll now go under radiation treatment instead of chemotherapy.
Eads believes getting her yearly mammogram made a big impact.
“They really are quite inconvenient,” Eads said. “Moms, I know it’s hard. We have so many appointments for our kids, we have so many other things. We are running a household, we’re working, there’s so many things. I had this conversation with my girlfriends so many times after the fact, you just have to make the time to go do it.”
While Eads’ breast cancer story is ongoing, the most important thing for her is spreading the word to other women to do their part by getting screened early.
“I’m just ready to get to radiation, get past radiation and just start healing and have this be a chapter in my life and not wake up every day and having to think what’s the next step as far as this breast cancer journey goes,” Eads said.
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