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Tammy Stuver is a person on the go who wasn’t about to let breast cancer keep her down for long.
“There is so much more to me than cancer, and it wasn’t going to get the best of me,” the 47-year-old Johnstown resident said.
For the past five years, Stuver has worked at the family-owned Stuver’s Riverside Nursery along with her husband, Jesse, doing everything from interacting with customers and offering them suggestions on ways to spruce up their yards to potting and repotting plants.
“It’s good therapy for me,” she said.
“I probably walk five miles a day around this nursery.
“This business keeps you busy.”
But the normally active woman had to slow down in August 2009 after small tumors were discovered in both breasts following a routine mammogram and then a breast MRI.
“I had no indication something was wrong.
“There were no lumps,” she said. “There is no family history at all, so if I can get breast cancer, anyone can.”
After she sought a second opinion at McGee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, the decision was made to do a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction surgery.
“Naturally, I was scared. I never thought this would happen to me. Nobody does,” Stuver said. “But I had to do what needed to be done.”
She had the surgery done in December 2009 and implants put in. She made numerous trips to Pittsburgh to have the implants adjusted to her desired size.
Fortunately, Stuver didn’t have to go through chemotherapy or radiation because the tumors were so small, the cancer hadn’t spread and it was caught very early.
“I never thought for one minute this would kill me. I have too much to live for,” she said.
Today she is cancer-free and regularly visits her oncologist for checkups.
“So far everything has been good,” Stuver said.
Stuver credits her family and friends as her support system throughout her ordeal.
“You have to have positive people in your life.
“My husband was at every appointment with me and is my No. 1 cheerleader,” she said.
Stuver said she’d tell other women who might be going through this to make sure they have a good doctor and to get a second opinion if needed. She also stressed the importance of having annual mammograms.
“You do what you are comfortable with and do what you want to do, not what others say you should do,” she said.
She admits the thought of the cancer returning is in the back of her mind and that one is never really free of it, but she is optimistic.
“Even if it comes back, the research has come so far in the past two years since I was diagnosed, this is not a death sentence,” Stuver said.
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Video and editing by Justin Dennis
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