The one body that everyone knows best is their own. It is their temple. Therefore, a mere brush of the hand in the shower is enough to notice something new.
In some cases, these minor differences can range from an odd bruise to unexpected stubble. Others are more serious, a knot on the back of the head, a deep sore.
A lump.
On Jan. 8, 2015, as Michelle Meadows, 37, casually bathed, she noticed a small, bean-sized lump in her right breast, setting her on a nearly year-long journey of balancing chemotherapy treatments and work as a senior associate of Longwood Athletics, while trying to maintain her sanity, hope and, perhaps most importantly for her, faith.
“A lot of my story is not just about breast cancer, but it’s really my walk with God and my own faith though this,” said Meadows.
Initially, her doctors didn’t express any worry due to the bean’s seemingly smooth texture, but nevertheless sent her through a series of breast studies. Following a long day of tests and after waiting for the results, Meadows’ doctor sat down next to her.
The bean wasn’t as smooth as we thought, he said.
There is reason for concern, he said.
The next step to diagnosis was performing a biopsy. In many cases, patients have to wait several weeks to a month for an appointment. Surprisingly, an appointment opened up for Meadows the next day.
“This was the first sign of God just kind of being there for me,” she said.
After a weekend of waiting for the results, she received a phone call from a number she recognized automatically. Not wanting to hear the results alone, she went to her boyfriend’s house to return the call unsuccessfully. The doctor called her back as she was driving herself home, telling her to call him when she arrived.
And she did.
“He said a lot of words and a lot of big things. I knew that moment I had cancer, but I had no idea what that meant,” said Meadows.
From there, the most difficult part of her journey began, physically and spiritually. Six months of chemotherapy treatment followed by surgery and three weeks of radiation laid ahead, all presenting her with the question, “Is my faith real?”
Although Meadows grew up in a religious home, it was six years ago that she fully devoted herself to her Christian faith.
“It was 2009, and God just grabbed a hold of me and said, ‘it’s not your parent’s faith, do you believe or not?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I believe. I want to follow you,’” Meadows described. “And it’s been a journey ever since.”
At the start of 2015, prior to finding the lump, Meadows decided to write a journal for the first time. Searching for her theme, Meadows looked to God for a word to “anchor” her.
Surrender. With her diagnosis, the word involved more than she expected.
“I thought it would be surrendering bad habits or attitudes or selfishness, and now I was looking and saying well, I have to surrender my life and my health to your will for me,” she said.
Her theme of surrendering her life to her faith held throughout the various stages in her treatment. Her realization allowed her to move past the initial jolts of fear towards cancer’s uncertainty and approach each issue as they came with trust in her beliefs.
“God is trustworthy,” said Meadows, another lesson she felt the experience taught her.
At times, the theme coincided with the phrase, “Stand still.”
Following her initial biopsy, she was required to have an MRI where her radiologist found a “suspicious” lymph node—a potential sign that the cancer was spreading. Meadows needed another biopsy.
After having the second biopsy, she invited an old friend to pray and eat with her. As she waited, she heard the lyrics of an old Christian song in her head, the music not actually being played nor had she listened to the song recently.
Two lines entered her mind:
“When you feel like you’ve reached the end, he’ll make a way for you, you just have to stand still and let God move and the answer will come but only in his time.”
Repeatedly, the phrase “Stand Still” appeared as the prospect of her cancer’s growth loomed. Meadows and her friend reflected on the true meaning of salvation, a word defined to Meadows the previous Sunday at church during a prayer for her by a woman she hadn’t met before.
“She (the woman from church) says it’s not just salvation of your soul and to live with God for eternity. But it’s about wholeness and healing and restoration and just God’s overall care for us,” said Meadows.
When the second biopsy results arrived, her radiologist delivered good news. The lymph node was clean, the cancer remained in its original form.
Either way, Meadows had to begin chemotherapy. While effective in its treatment, the therapy is known to place a lot of strain on the body with many internal side effects such as nausea and fatigue.
The internal changes, Meadows could keep to herself. Externally, the treatment exposed her struggle in a way most people recognize, hair loss.
The doctors told her to expect her hair to begin thinning 14 to 17 days after her first session.
While away at the Big South 2014-15 basketball tournament in March, the first strands began to take their leave. Some in a baseball cap, a few along the inside of the sink.
Finally, after returning home, she decided the time had come to go all the way.
“The more I put gel on my hands in my hair, I’d end up with more hair on my hand than gel, and I said I can’t do this anymore,” said Meadows, then asked her boyfriend, Longwood police officer Billy Shular, to bring over his clippers and shave her head.
Shular went one step further. He shaved his own head first then Meadows’.
“Cancer is not just about the person who has cancer. It touches families and the loved ones of those who are going through it,” she said. “I can’t thank him (Schular) or my family enough.”
Everything about chemotherapy was hard, but the loss of her hair took a toll mentally as the symptom altered the way others saw her.
“Everything this culture tells you about beauty and you’re looking at yourself and you have no hair and how do you start to see yourself the way God sees you,” she said, her eyes watered, voice catching slightly.
Even while taking on the full force of her treatments, Meadows refused to take a leave from her position as the senior associate athletic director of athletics administration. Troy Austin, Longwood’s director of athletics and friend for 13 years, told her to stay home, but Meadows wanted to continue to work, at the very least for the sake of her own sanity.
“At one point I told her don’t come in,” said Austin with a chuckle. “But she really wanted to come in, I think she felt there was good energy from with people. I think she wanted something to take her mind off dealing with the treatment.”
Meadows typically came in three to four days a week depending on the stage in her chemotherapy, focusing on budgetary needs of the department and more long-term projects.
The rest of the athletics department shared the other part of her workload. This included Maya Ozery, the assistant athletics director for academic and leadership development.
“I never really thought about it as picking up anybody else’s role. It was just this was what we need to do, and this is what we did,” said Ozery. “It’s never about my responsibilities or your responsibilities, we work very much as a team.”
Aside from the department’s administration, Longwood’s sports teams also reached out in many ways, including wearing pink bracelets provided by Austin, dedicating a pink out game to Meadows, and presenting her with a pink baseball.
Other schools also reached out to Meadows’ cause. Liberty University women’s basketball dedicated a game to her as well as her alma mater Virginia Tech, where she played softball all four years in college. She was recognized at the softball game alongside a former athletic trainer with ovarian cancer.
Meadows holds records and was inducted into Virginia Tech’s Hall of Fame five years ago.
Two weeks ago, following her final post-surgery radiation treatment out of 16, Meadows was declared 100 percent in full remission of her breast cancer. Ozery said the department took a “sigh of relief.”
In celebration, Adidas provided Longwood Athletics with free t-shirts reading, “All-in-for Michelle.” Austin said the department wore them to her surprise party in honor of the announcement.
“Grace is unmerited favor. I didn’t deserve to be healed of cancer. God just gave me grace. He gave me grace to walk through it, He gave me grace to get through really hard days and he’s still trying to teach me grace now,” said Meadows.
As with all cancer, it can always return, but with the current prognosis, Meadows is happy to be where she is now and thankful to all those close to her.
In her reflection, she stated, “As with all of us, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I haven’t loved people as well as I should’ve. I’ve been so driven to want to be successful that sometimes I get so focused maybe on a goal that I forget that it’s about people, too. And they’re more important than the goal.”
“I think that’s want I want the rest of my life,” Meadows said carefully. “Is just to care about people. And that right there is all of God’s grace.”
*11/11/2015 5:58 p.m. CORRECTION: Billy Shular's name was previously misspelled as Billy Shuler.
