Year of chemotherapy concludes for Atkins

Journalism professor Sue Atkins began the semester with a spunky new hairdo, leaving the scarves and Missouri team caps she wore throughout the last year. She hadn’t been sporting those head coverings purely by choice.

Last January, after a routine mammogram, Sue was told she had a cancerous, one-centimeter lump in her breast in need of quick removal. For the rest of the year, Sue underwent cancer treatments with the support of her husband, Peter.

As they sat in her PLNU office, Sue and her husband bantered back and forth, playing off each other as if they had been lifelong friends. In reality, the two have lived most of their lives in different parts of the world. Peter is a Kiwi from New Zealand, and Sue is originally from St. Louis, Mo.

“He’s my immigrant laborer,” Sue said with a sideways glance at her husband.
“Oh, the windows are filthy, aren’t they?” Peter responded, grinning.

The two first met in 1987. Sue was part of a Methodist witness mission to New Zealand, and Peter was the local in charge of organizing the event. After the team left, Peter kept in touch with friends from the trip through Christmas newsletters, which Sue received for the following 10 years.

It was in one of those letters that Sue learned that Peter’s first wife, Dorothy, had passed away from breast cancer after a nine-year battle. The cancer eventually spread to Dorothy’s bones and liver; she died two months later.

During a trip to America in 1997, Peter reunited with Sue, then 51, and they started dating. The relationship was mostly long-distance, built on e-mails and phone calls. They’ve now been married almost 10 years.

As their lives changed drastically at the beginning of 2007, Peter became a strong foundation for Sue while she struggled with her cancer treatment.

“I always recognized that it was as hard or harder on him since he went through this before,” Sue said. “I was conscious of my diagnosis, but then I thought, ‘Oh shoot. Psychologically, this is going to be as hard on him as it is on me.’”

She got the lump and some affected lymph nodes removed during the President’s Day holiday in order to avoid missing class. After recovering from the surgery, she underwent eight sessions of chemotherapy over 16 weeks. Toward the end of summer, she went to radiation therapy 36 straight days, cutting into the beginning of the fall semester. Despite her physical exhaustion, she refused to allow the treatments to keep her from teaching.

“I just had to take a nap every afternoon,” she said.

After the second chemotherapy session, her hair fell out “in chunks,” she said. Her doctors began prescribing estrogen-blocking pills and at-home shots.

Chemotherapy attacks white blood cells in the body, and Sue still sometimes feels a tingling in her feet and fingers from all the radiation. Radiation therapy has a slight sunburning effect, which often causes fatigue. Because of her weak immune system, Sue wasn’t allowed to eat any fresh foods that could not be peeled.

“I began peeling grapes and strawberries,” Sue said. “I was so desperate.”
Sue began wearing scarves and hats every day to class. When Sue informed the department of her situation, she was met with compassion from colleagues and students. Sue noted more people “opened up” to her with stories of their personal encounters with cancer. Professor Bettina Pedersen initiated a Hat Week. All faculty of the LJML Department wore their favorite hats or scarves for a week in honor of Sue.

“I was very proud of the way my colleagues rallied around Dr. Atkins. I think we all tried to be available to [help] Dr. Atkins, while, at the same time, letting her be the one to let us know how we could best help,” Karl Martin, LJML Department chair, said.

Even though Sue is scheduled for another mammogram soon, her hopes remain high.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a new year,” she said. “The treatments are done. Things are looking up.”