Melissa’s blog
Writings and photographs of her cancer journey are on two sites:
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This article is part of our month-long focus on breast cancer. To learn more or find ways to help, go to our Pink Edition Page.
KETTERING — Little more than a week before she died, Melissa Fortener McLaughlin’s nephew took his first steps. Eight-month-old Andrew walked to his Aunt Melissa.
It was one of the last milestones in Melissa’s 30 years. More than five of those years were spent battling breast cancer. First came her diagnosis at age 25, after noticing a lump. One clinic told her they didn’t screen 25-year-olds for breast cancer.
But an eventual biopsy proved breast cancer. A subsequent test also showed she was six weeks pregnant. She underwent a mastectomy and doctors planned chemotherapy for her second trimester when it would be safer for the baby. But the boy died in her seventh month of pregnancy.
“I look back at how she handled life and lost her son. She must’ve had times where she was like this,” said her mother, Pam Fortener, referring to her tears while sitting among her daughter’s possessions. “But I never saw it.”
In fact, almost a year after her death on Jan. 3, 2009, Melissa’s memory is aiding others diagnosed with breast cancer. Two family friends recently diagnosed told Pam that Melissa’s battle full of activity and humor, and without pity and sadness will guide them.
“I think Melissa affected a lot of people that way. I think people changed the way they live their lives — complained less, enjoyed every day more,” said Pam, a Kettering school librarian. “That is her legacy.”
During the course of her cancer fight, Melissa published a blog, “B Positive. It’s not just my blood type.”
In it, she finds positives in surgery: As a rule, she has trouble falling asleep so anesthesia was cool. The mundane: She discusses her love of “The Bachelor - Where are they now?” And she writes about begging nurses to take pictures of her surgery for her blog. (They refused.)
But she never talks about being scared or sad.
Melissa’s treatment started at Kettering Medical Center in 2003. She battled cancer after losing the baby and had cancer-free years. But then it would pop up again, first once a year, then every six months.
Melissa always sought out treatment, wanting more chemotherapy to help battle the cancer, not looking for breaks from the often sickening, uncomfortable treatment.
In 2007, Melissa walked with her mother in the Breast Cancer 3-Day in Atlanta. The walk is one of a series of three-day, 20-miles-per-day walks that raise millions of dollars for breast cancer research.
Nearing the end of the walk, Pam had four blisters that had broken. She was having trouble finishing.
“She said, ‘Mom, if I can do it, you can do it. We’re going to finish this walk on bloody knuckles if we have to,’ ” Pam said.
She also lived life apart from cancer, still attending scrapbooking weekends with friends, and chili cook-offs with her husband, John, in Cincinnati. She stood in an hours-long line to see then-candidate Barack Obama speak last year.
She never discussed dying. The conversations were always about how this round of chemotherapy, or this trip to the intensive care unit, would be the last.
She made someone take a photo of the foot-long needle that removed fluid from her lungs, and noted on her blog that the liquid looked like Killian’s beer.
In April 2008, she started her dream job at the University of Cincinnati as a marketing and promotions coordinator. But by the fall, just months into the job, the cancer spread to her hips, spine, pelvis, neck and sternum. She had trouble breathing. She wanted more chemotherapy. Her doctor could not give her what she wanted.
“He said, ‘Melissa, you have fought this for five years,’ ” Pam said. “It’s time to stop fighting. Do you understand me?’ She shook her head, ‘yes.’ ”
She went home for Christmas and even went out on a frigid day to buy presents at Target. She never wore wigs during her illness, always scarves. But in Christmas pictures she sports a blonde bob. And her nephew, Drew, walked to her.
It was a good ending, but an ending just the same. Days after Christmas, she returned to the hospital and died.
Now Pam just completed a benefit dinner to fund a scholarship in Melissa’s name for a student at her alma mater, Fairmont High School. One of the items available at an auction will be a quilt, made from the T-shirts Melissa wore in the hospital. She hated hospital gowns. She loved Fairmont Firebird sports.
Earlier this month, Pam did the walk in Atlanta, but this time without her daughter getting her through those last miles, or whatever hard times come.
“I don’t know if I was strength for her, but she was my strength.”
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