|
Lisa Kramer did not let her busy life as a single, working mother with a teenager at home keep her from getting a mammogram two years ago. But when her insurance refused to pay for that mammogram, she wondered whether she would be able to keep getting the yearly breast cancer screenings.
It had been almost two years since her last mammogram when, in summer 2005, she received a newsletter in the mail announcing the Empower and Engage program at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center. Empower and Engage, funded by the St. Louis affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, makes breast cancer screenings available to women who, like Kramer, do not have insurance to cover them.
Empower and Engage participants receive breakfast or lunch, a clinical breast examination, a mammogram and a breast-health education session with St. Mary’s professionals.
“I’m the kind of a person who believes that certain things come to you for a reason,” said Kramer, who made an appointment for the next Empower and Engage. She was expecting to get a mammogram and a free lunch. She was not expecting the mammogram to show a troublesome spot in her breast.
“I felt like I had been called into the principal’s office” when a nurse called her back to discuss her mammogram. Nurse Mary Schurk, director of the St. Mary’s Women’s Well, quickly put Kramer’s mind at ease.
“She was so good. She told me the results of the mammogram didn’t mean anything was wrong; I just needed some more tests. She talked to me woman to woman, not nurse to patient,” Kramer said. Before leaving St. Mary’s, Kramer had a return appointment and a pink rose—a gift given to every woman who comes to Empower and Engage.
A biopsy of her breast showed that the small lump was nothing for Kramer to worry about. But the scare of having a spot on her mammogram reminded her of the importance of getting her yearly screenings. Now she is committed to reminding her friends to get their mammograms.
“I know a lot of people who go for 10 years and don’t get a mammogram,” she said. At a pool party this summer, Kramer presented each of her friends with stickers for their calendars to serve as reminders of monthly breast self-exams and yearly mammograms. She also gave them each a gift that to her had become a symbol of support and encouragement: a pink rose. | 
Print View
