Jill’s story: Anchor's breast cancer becomes focus

[Posted by alaurie_97@yahoo.com]

Jill’s story: Anchor's breast cancer becomes focus
By MICHAEL MOORE




Jill Valley never saw them coming.

In the dark, she didn't see the bicycle rack. In the daily flow of
life, she didn't see the cancer.

In the strangest of turns, though, it was the bike rack that helped
her see the cancer.

Go back to April. The longtime KPAX-TV news anchor had her annual
checkup with her doctor, Kendra Long.

A clear mammogram. A cholesterol count of 142. Excellent blood
pressure and heart rate.

"I've been marching up Sentinel almost every day, and I felt as
healthy as I've ever been," said the 44-year-old Valley, who started
with KPAX in 1992 after three years at KECI.

On July 9, a Friday, Valley got home from work after the late
newscast. Her boyfriend, Steve Allard, was there.

He'd somehow left the dome light on in his car, so Valley ran out to
turn it off. In the dark, she slammed into the bike rack attached to
the back of his car.

She hit her right arm and shoulder area hard, but didn't think much of
it.

The next day, her arm and shoulder were pretty sore. As Valley ran her
hand over the painful areas, she found several lumpy areas above her
right breast.

"I thought it was probably just bruising, but I decided to get it
checked out if it still hurt on Monday," Valley said. "Steve felt and
joked that he hoped it wasn't cancer. I knew it wasn't cancer, so we
laughed."

Valley has a long, typed list of things to do around her house -
shutters for front, paint front door, paving stones near deck, etc. -
and it was there she jotted the words, "Call Doctor."

"Even with the note, I almost blew it off," she recalled. "It was July
sweeps and that's when all the ratings are done, so I just couldn't
afford to miss work. But I went."

The lumps weren't a bruise, weren't the result of running into the
bike rack.

"They found three tumors, and two of them were invasive ductile
carcinoma," Valley said. "I just burst into tears, totally lost it. I
was literally on my knees crying."

***

Breast cancer.

Other than skin cancer, breast cancer is the one most likely to strike
women. One in eight women will have invasive breast cancer at some
point in their lives.

Fortunately, the chance that breast cancer will be responsible for a
woman's death is one in 35.

That is some consolation, but not much for women like Valley.

"My mind literally ran wild," she said. "Anywhere your mind can go,
mine went. I questioned everything, I guess, probably because I
couldn't believe this was happening to me."

Ever the journalist, Valley wanted an answer she wasn't likely to get:
Why me?

"I went over every possible thing in my head," said Valley, who grew
up in Spokane. "I wondered was I too close to Hanford. Was it
something from Stone Container? Could it be ethanol in our gas? Or was
it somehow me? Did I do something wrong?"

Mostly, she thought about her adopted daughter, Raquel, who is 6 and
going into the first grade at Hellgate Elementary School.

"I live for that little girl and honestly, I wondered, why would God
do this to me," she said through tears. "I said, ‘Please God, just let
me have 30 years, so I can see my little girl grow up.' "

Valley, of course, knew there was no answer to her questions.

"I've been part of all these stories for my whole career," she said.
"The car wreck, the murder, the horrible disease. I know there's no
explanation sometimes. I know there's no answer. I know that, but
there's some part of you that still just wants to know why. Why?"

Dr. Brad Pickhardt, who performed a mastectomy on Valley's right
breast not long after she was diagnosed, told her the same thing.

"Dr. Brad told me that I'd be better off spending my time on getting
better and taking care of Raquel," she said. "I knew that, but
sometimes you just have to hear it from someone else."

***

Not long after her diagnosis, Jill Valley decided she better tell her
viewers what was happening.

"My boss, Bob Hermes, told me it was something I'd probably want to
get out front of," she said. "I hadn't thought it through, but he was
right. We're sort of living our lives out right here in front of
people, so it made sense."

So Valley went on the air and told her viewers about the diagnosis.

"I was so, so nervous, but I got through it," she said.

What followed stunned her.

"You know how it is as a reporter, we're pretty well known," she said.
"When you've been here as long as you and I have, people know you, or
feel like they know you. You're part of their lives. So I'm pretty
used to people taking some interest in me. But this, well, this was
beyond anything I could have imagined."

The cards now reside in a bright pink bag. There are hundreds of them,
some from folks she knows, most from people she's never met.

They are, by turn, thoughtful, kind, touching and gracious.

Nearly every card includes the words "you're in our thoughts and/or
prayers."

Some are addressed properly, others just say "Jill Valley, KPAX,
Missoula."

Each one has touched Valley in a way she could not have predicted.

"It's overwhelming, really," she said. "I feel like part of our job is
bringing people together in the community, but I never imagined people
coming to my aid like this. I never thought I'd be the story."

It's a common feeling in the news business. These "stories" happen to
other people. We cover this stuff, so it couldn't happen to us.

But it did. It does.

Valley's audience came to her side, but so did her colleagues. Hermes
is a leukemia survivor, and he and his wife have been steadfast in
their support.

Valley's co-anchor, Mark Holyoak, familiar with her fondness for music
from the 1980s, went so far as to arrange a visit from Bitterroot
Valley rocker Huey Lewis.

Her family, of course, has been rock solid.

"Steve hasn't missed an appointment I've had with the doctors," she
said. "He's been there every step. He still loves me, even the carved-
up version of me."

With her daughter, Valley tries to keep things upbeat and light.

"We just do a lot of joking," she said with yet another tear. "She
asks me what happened to my boo-boo. I tell her it got a germ and had
to be taken away."

***

She comes to work every day, even the days when she does chemotherapy.

"For better or worse, this is my life, this is my identity," she said.

Because doctors felt they caught the cancer early and it doesn't
appear to have spread, she won't need radiation therapy.

But on Aug. 19, she started an eight-week regimen of chemo.

"It takes it out of you a little bit, for sure, but I can still get
back and do the things I need to do," she said. "It's really important
for my brain to keep doing what's familiar to me."

In the next few weeks, however, she'll do something decidedly outside
her routine.

She'll go bald and start wearing a wig when she's on air.

"I'm mostly going to be a hat person, but I will wear a wig on the
broadcasts," she said.

She already has a couple picked out. One looks much like her hair
today, while another, the one she calls Jenny, is a bit lighter.

"This is a business that sometimes focuses too much on looks, so it
makes me nervous, the hair thing," she said. "But given all the notes
and calls and e-mails, I think people are going to be OK with it. I
sure hope so."

Sometimes too much is made of appearance. Sometimes, usually the best
of times, appearances mean almost nothing.

But sometimes the simple act of appearing means the most. That's where
Jill Valley is today and for the foreseeable future.

"How many times have we done this?" she said. "Find a story and do it
because it's a good story, but also because other people might learn
something from it. You've done it. I've done it."

Now she is going to live it, live, on television.

This is the story - breast cancer. Yes, it can be deadly. But if the
disease is detected early by examinations and mammograms, most women
survive.

They each survive in their own way, with their friends and family,
without their hair, without the wholeness of body they once felt.

But they survive.

Jill Valley is what they look like.