Connor Sampson threw for a career-best 449 yards Saturday against Indiana State, but another slow start led to a 37-27 WIU loss. (Photo by GoLeathernecks.com)

A week after going toe-to-toe with one of the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s most powerful offenses, Western Illinois struggled Saturday to contain the league’s lowest-scoring attack.

The Leathernecks fell behind by two scores in the first quarter and never recovered in a 37-27 loss against Indiana State, a team that was averaging only 13 points a game this season before Saturday’s contest in Terre Haute, Ind.

The loss overshadowed a career-best passing day for WIU senior quarterback Connor Sampson, who finished with 449 yards and four touchdown passes. While putting up the third-best passing day in WIU history, Sampson threw for 282 yards in the second half with Western trailing.

Western (1-5 overall, 1-2 MVFC) gave up 219 rushing yards to the Sycamores – led by Peterson Kerlegrand’s career day of 178 yards and two touchdowns – and an efficient passing day from quarterback Anthony Thompson, a Northern Illinois transfer, that allowed Indiana State to build a 24-7 halftime lead.

The Leathernecks were coming off a 31-30 overtime loss to No. 8 Southern Illinois in Macomb last weekend.

But Saturday, they sputtered early offensively and were under constant pass rush pressure from Indiana State.

Here are three things Prairie State Pigskin learned about the Western Illinois loss:

Control up front

While using its offensive line to control the run game, Indiana State also got a big day from its defense, especially up front. Senior defensive lineman Inoke Moala had 3.5 first-half sacks of Sampson. The Sycamores (3-3, 1-2) finished with six sacks and 10 quarterback hurries on the day.

Despite being pressured most of the first half, Sampson posted a career-high 36 completions.

2. Big day for big plays

Western’s defense was repeatedly hurt by big plays. On the day, Indiana State posted 13 different plays of at least 10 yards. Already leading 17-7 in the second quarter, the Sycamores used a 59-yard Kerlegrand scoring run to take a 24-7 lead into halftime.

Less than 4 minutes into the second half, ISU running back Phazione McClurge grabbed a short swing pass from Thompson, got a key block and raced 88 yards for a 31-7 lead. Thompson was very efficient, connecting on 15 of 21 passes for 226 yards and two TDs. Tight end Zach Larkin also was a key weapon with four catches for 72 yards and a TD for the Sycamores.

3. Slow starts a habit

After the Leathernecks used big second-half rallies to beat Youngstown State and take Southern Illinois to overtime the past two weeks, they endured yet another slow start in Terre Haute. They managed only four first downs in the opening quarter.

Down 10-0, they allowed a blocked punt that set Indiana State up with good field position, which they turned into a 17-0 lead.

On the season, Western has scored only 28 first-quarter points in six games. In turn, the WIU defense has allowed 80 points to opponents in the first quarter.

News and notes

Nineteen of Western’s 30 first downs on the day came in the second half. … As part of Sampson’s career day, wide receivers Dallas Daniels and Tony Tate had big efforts. Daniels caught seven passes for 143 yards. Tate caught eight passes for 109 yards and a score. Leading receiver Dennis Houston also caught eight passes. … WIU safety Darius Joiner had a game-high 11 tackles, while fellow safety Mike Lawson and linebacker Greg Benton Jr. each had a sack. … Before Saturday’s victory, Indiana State was coming off consecutive blowout losses to South Dakota State (44-0) and South Dakota (38-10).

What’s next?

Western Illinois hosts defending national FCS runner-up South Dakota State at noon Saturday, Oct. 16 in Macomb.

Democrat senators and Eric Zorn get nailed by wokesters.

Pastor Martin Niemöller‘s famous lament described how he didn’t care and kept silent when “they came for” others, but “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

It came to mind with the news about how the woke have turned their fury on two Democratic senators and former Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.

By now, you should have seen (or maybe not) how wokesters followed Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizon into a public washroom, and video taped the episode while she did her business behind a closed stall door. Or how they harassed her on an airplane. The former is a crime and if the latter isn’t, it should be.

Another Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, got the same dose of malevolence for, like Sinema, wisely and courageous stepping forward to oppose the lunatic multi-trillion-dollar basket of goodies concocted by President Joe Biden and his progressive puppeteers. They kayaked up to his houseboat, as if surrounding him on the water would persuade him to change his mind.

More on point is the treatment the wokesters gave to Zorn. He had been invited to be on a DePaul University panel to discuss “Tough times for local journalism.” But the sponsors were urged, more like instructed, to disinvite Zorn. The demand came in an op-ed in the school’s newspaper headlined: “DePaul prides itself on diversity, but invites controversial guest speaker Eric Zorn.

Now you might think that the demand came from a couple of right-wing nuts, seeing as how Zorn has established himself as one of Chicago’s most thoughtful and credible liberal voices.

Nay. The demand was issued by students Sonal Soni and Nadia Hernandez, because–get this–Zorn allegedly “…wrote an opinion article following the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo that expressed racist views about Latinx youth and great insensitivity towards police brutality.”

Huh? Really?

For sure. The invitation, they whined, was “incredibly out of touch.” Zorn, they said, had offended “an entire community.”

Among Zorn’s parade of horribles:

Prior to his Toledo column, Zorn further showed his racial bias when discussing the cases of Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman in another opinion piece. Rittenhouse killed two peopleduring street protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020. Zimmerman fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Both Rittenhouse and Zimmerman claimed they were acting out of self-defense. Zimmerman was acquitted at trial in 2013, and, I believe, rightly so,” Zorn wrote in his Chicago Tribune column.

Uh oh, Eric. You stepped in it right there.

To sum up: Zorn decided to withdraw, because, among other things, ” I concluded that my presence here would distract from the agenda and be unfair to my friends on the panel.”

I wouldn’t have withdrawn, but that’s me. Bring it on. I reserve my greater disappoint for the two panel sponsors, DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence and the DePaul University Society of Professional Journalists. Aside from whatever feeble attempts they may have made to defend Zorn, they should have raised the roof. This was an attack on a journalist colleague and more broadly on freedom of speech and the press.

As for DePaul, it used to be a university, where debate, learning and respect for ideas used to be the coins of the realm. I don’t know what DePaul is now.

The woke demands that Zorn withdraw would be fatuous if they weren’t so libelous. Zorn doesn’t need me to defend him; he’s a talented and honest craftsman, although wrong on most things.

The bullying by a couple of sophomoric kids wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t an isolated incident. But it’s just a symptom of an authoritarian streak that has been brewing for years in liberal circles. I personally felt it in my 30 years of op-ed writing for the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune. My bosses were regularly told, “How can you have someone like Dennis Byrne working for you?” I don’t know just how much of a role they played in my departure.

Current examples abound:

Maddison Farris, the editor-in-chief of the Oklahoma State University student newspaper, was forced to resign after facing criticism for writing a column critical of her university’s mask policy.

Dorian Abbot, a professor in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, was invited to give the annual Carlson Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A student mob protested and his invitiation was withdrawn. His sin? “Arguing for academic evaluations based on academic merit,” he said.

Examples could fill a book. Actually it already has. Check out Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters, by Charlie Kirk.

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It’s been a long time coming but makes no mistake it’s finally hit home in Chicago. For quite some time now I have been delivering the sober news about Chicago’s violence. Some friends and yeah, foes alike have made comments about me delivering such devastating and sobering news. Some see the actual numbers but few can relate. I can easily attest to fighting the mental strain of policing violent neighborhoods and it certainly cannot be realized except for those who are assigned day after day hour after hour. What cops see in those neighborhoods is completely outside the minds and imaginations of most people.

What I was alluding to when I said finally hit home, I was referring to the awakening of the media and of course Chicago’s fickle, ignorant, cowardly and clueless, politicians. If you look at the headline above you can see what snapped most of the City out of its malaize. In the middle of the afternoon on 4 Oct, one of Chicago’s more formidable streets gangs the 4 CORNER HUSTLERS DECIDED TO SETTLE THE ISSUE OF WHO WAS GOING TO BE THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD AND close members HIS STAFF. While hundreds of shoppers and other folks were tending to daily chores, shopping, walking along, some with baby strollers, and even bicyclists, members of the 4 Corners Urban Terrorists Gang blatantly engaged in a rolling shoot out in what witnesses described as a firefight. More than 72 shell casings were expended, 3 people were shot one killed and scores of people were sent scurrying for their lives, while others just froze in place on the ground.

All in all five persons were arrested and taken into custody. What comes next may be difficult to believe but it finally got the attention of a City that was quite frankly existing in denial. A city that has had over 670 murders, and over 3,700 folks shot, hundreds and hundreds of teenagers victims of gun violence, along with babies, toddlers, and seniors, as a matter of fact, while I’m writing this another 2-year-old child was wounded. Add to the mix 59 mass shootings in which 4 or more folks are shot or killed at one time, 189 Expressway shootings, and over 1,250 armed carjackings. The most in more than 20 years.

NOW, are you ready! Cook County’s STUPENDIOUSLY INCOMPETENT STATES ATTORNEY KIM FOXX (remember the Jussie Smollet fiasco) ANNOUNCED THAT THE SUSPECTS WHO WERE ARRESTED ARE BEING RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGING—-HER REASON BEING THAT THEY WERE MUTUAL COMBATANTS AND THEREFORE SHE WAS LETTING THEM GO FREE- My first reaction was GEE! ARRON BURR MUST FEEL VINDICATED. DUELING HAS RETURNED TO AMERICA, THANKS TO KIM FOXX—-MUTUAL COMBATANTS- Anybody in Chicago who has the least bit of sense would have to look at Kim Foxx and either believe she is a total disaster or the enemy of decency-The Naval War College for Marines teaches from a book called “ON WAR” by Carl von Clausewitz in which he states that “you plan for your enemies capabilities, not his intentions” my guess is old Carl is doing a double roll trying to make sense of Kim Foxx who I believe, at least, is the enemy of common sense and decency.

Here again if one does seriously think about violence in Chicago all you would have to do is think about the 135 people charged with murder in Cook County who are on home confinement, along with thousands of others charged with serious felonies. If they are not on Home Confinement they are released on low bonds or no bonds at all, or a simple promise to appear in court. The below photo is the response that Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot had to the release of the 4 Corner COMBATANTS, notice the words “Could be sent into CHAOS.” It made me wonder if maybe she was the Mayor of Chicago but living in a land far away. She has had more PLANS to combat Chicago’s outrageous violence that it’s hard to remember any of them. The City is now being called the most dangerous place in America by even the bungling half-wits on the City Council. See the feature photo in this post.

A Little extra sidebar to all this is not so much the Mayor being shocked by the lack of charges being filed in the “combatants shoot out” it was the reaction of Chicago’s richest man Ken Griffin the billionaire philanthropist who weighed in saying he was thinking of pulling up stakes in Chicago and taking his business elsewhere. He stated that his office building’s windows downtown have had at least 75 bullet holes from wild gunfights and at least one of his drivers has been the victim of an attempted carjacking. See the Griffin outrage in the photo below. I believe prior to the 4 Corner Shoot out that headline would have never been. Ah! the awakening continues. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle’s security detail at her home it has just been revealed, one of her security guards had been robbed and his weapon stolen. On another occasion last week another of her home security guards shot and wounded an attempted carjacker who fled the scene but was later apprehended.

My good friend and author Peter Bella calls Chicago “DEADWOOD’ AFTER THE LAWLESS TOWN OF THE OLD WEST- Ya Know! Peter just might be right-The City of big shoulders is under siege and it has no head on top of those shoulders at least when it comes to being compared to Afghanistan by Ken Griffin

Here we are with the best plastic surgeon at Mayo Clinic Rochester!! My twin sister and I “graduated” from regular checkups with her until 2024 because we’re doing so great after our double mastectomies with direct-to-implant reconstruction!

This blog post is the 40th in a series about my (and twin sister’s) breast cancer journey that began when we were 30 years old in July 2019. In 2019, I also started documenting our younger sister’s breast cancer previvorship journey. Here is a list of all of the posts written about our journey at Mayo Clinic’s Breast Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to date. To keep tabs on new posts, sign up for the “A Daily Miracle” email list at this link. You can also follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Before getting into the thick of this post, I wanted to celebrate the fact it’s BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH!!! First: In honor of this month, here’s a video of a speech that my twin sister and I gave at the American Cancer Society Minnesota’s 2nd Annual ResearcHERS Luncheon last week explaining our journey through breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship! We start talking at the 36 minute mark:

It was awesome to be able to share about our experience with a room full of award-winning researchers and donors and to meet some incredible researchers dedicating their lives to discovering new cancer diagnosis and treatment protocols and doctors treating cancer patients on a daily basis. God is good!!!

Here’s my dad’s Real Men Wear Pink Campaign page! You can donate at this link!

Second!: Our dad (pictured above) is the co-chair of the American Cancer Society Minnesota’s “Real Men Wear Pink” 2021 campaign, and you can donate to his campaign at this link (he’s already raised over $3,000 of his $10,500 goal)! Thank you to those who have already donated to the cause!!

Here’s the whole family after the Chris Steinke Breast Cancer Awareness Facebook and Instagram Live Fireside Friday Concert on October 8th! ICYMI, watch us play and sing at this link! 🙂

Third!: My husband and I co-hosted a live music evening celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness and my dad’s “Real Men Wear Pink” campaign over on the Chris Steinke Facebook page last night (pictured above!). In case you missed it, here’s a link to the “show!”

Now, onto our latest updates from our latest trip to Mayo Clinic in Rochester!:

Praise!: I’m 9 months pregnant (due with a baby boy due October 25th!), and, 2 years after my DCIS diagnosis and 5 months after a cancer recurrence scare and biopsy, have no signs of cancer recurrence! Also, my youngest sister is 21 weeks pregnant with a girl and, as a 27-year-old breast cancer previvor, has no signs of cancer, either!! God is good!! Praise!: Two years after our double mastectomies with direct-to-implant reconstruction, my twin sister and I have “graduated” from regular plastic surgery checkups at Mayo Clinic! We’ll go back if we have any trouble with our implants at all and, if we don’t have any problems, we’ll go back in 2024, 5 years after our original surgeries, for MRIs to make sure our implants are still healthy. If they’ve ruptured or are leaking, it will be time to exchange them (which, statistically, happens to women approximately every 7-10 years). Praise / Prayer Request!: My twin sister is in her 6th month of remission from breast cancer treatment(s) with no recurrence!! Last month, she was experiencing some dizziness, vertigo, blurred/double vision, and occasional panic attacks, but after a Brain MRI and remission checkup with her oncologist, she has discovered those symptoms are NOT CANCER!!! Instead of being a cancer recurrence, the dizziness, vertigo, blurred/double vision, and occasional panic attacks my twin sister was experiencing turned out to be a result of generalized anxiety/panic largely due to a combination of life circumstances. While we are praising the Lord for no more cancer, we are praying for my twin sister’s fears and anxieties to be calmed and for her continued health and healing as she kicks off “Breast Cancer Survivor Boot Camp” at the Mayo Clinic via Zoom next week!!!Praise!: In addition to her 4-month remission checkup, my twin sister also had an ovarian ultrasound and saw her gynecological oncology team for an exam. All was clear there, too, praise the Lord!Praise / Prayer Request!: My twin sister and her husband got the green light from her oncologist to take a timed break from her daily dose of Tamoxifen in 2022 to conceive using IVF. Prayers are appreciated for their health and discernment as they move forward with family planning later this year!!

Ultimately, we have several praise reports to share from our most recent exams at Mayo’s Plastic Surgery Department and Breast Clinic and from and my twin sister’s 4-month remission checkup, brain MRI, and checkup with her gynecological oncology team! But, all of these praises don’t come without recognition that cancer survivorship comes with plenty of mountains and valleys. Our “all clear” appointments plus my twin sister’s recent experiences through panic, anxiety, and fear of recurrence–in addition to glimpses of hope provided by God-given medical practitioners and the faithful love of the Lord!–are described in detail throughout this post.

Here we are ready to hit the road for a day full of appointments at Mayo Clinic Rochester: With Plastic Surgery and the Breast Clinic!

Celebrating Plastic Surgery Graduation!

Two years after our double mastectomies with direct-to-implant reconstruction, my twin sister and I have “graduated” from regular plastic surgery checkups at Mayo Clinic! We are convinced our plastic surgeon is the best plastic surgeon at Mayo Clinic for a number of reasons including the fact she wore a bright pink suit for our appointments this week and agreed to take a photo with us in our Mayo superfan tshirts as a “graduation photo” (pictured above at the top of this post and also below–we got posted on the Mayo Clinic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Instagram page! :)).

Here is a photo our plastic surgeon shared on the Mayo Clinic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery social media pages!!

We discussed the biopsy I had in April 2021 that ended up being benign fat necrosis. When I let my plastic surgeon and her resident know the biopsy site still hurts quite a bit and that I still experience some shooting/stinging aches and pains across my chest about once a week, she let me know that’s totally normal with fat necrosis / scar tissue and I just need to make sure to keep doing self-exams and clinical checkups with our breast clinic doctor to make sure there are no areas of tissue growing because “cancer grows. Scar tissue doesn’t.”

Our doctor also recommended that I potentially do physical therapy to help with those pains I’ve been experiencing due to scar tissue buildup. That’s something I’ll probably look into!

One final thing my plastic surgeon was pleased to find on physical exam was that my implants have maintained their integrity throughout pregnancy. Apparently, sometimes pregnancy can cause capsular contracture due to all the changing and shifting in body tissues, so she was thrilled everything is still looking good!

When it was time for my twin sister’s exam, we discussed a small bump that’s been protruding on the underside of her left breast implant since a week after her operation in 2020. It’s been causing her a bit of discomfort, and the plastic surgery team provided her with a thorough explanation of what it is: Likely a bit of Alloderm (cadaver skin that helps hold her implant in place) that is protruding from her implant on the lower left side of her chest. The team also gave a good explanation of what fixing that spot would entail: A trip to the OR under general anesthesia for a short operation to cut out the extra Alloderm and repair/remove the bump. Ultimately, it’s up to my twin sister and what she wants to do, but for now, it seems like she’s going to keep living with it because it’s not bothering her too much and she’d rather not have another operation right now!

Our doctor said that both of us are “looking great” and she was pleased to hear we are being tracked closely by our Mayo Breast Clinic doctors! We’ll go back to see her if we have any trouble with our implants at all. If we don’t have any problems, we’ll go back in 2024, 5 years after our original surgeries, for MRIs to make sure our implants are still healthy. When we go back to see her in 2024, if our implants have ruptured or are leaking, it will be time to exchange them (which, statistically, happens to women approximately every 7-10 years). While some people need new implants every few years, according to our doctor, some patients’ implants are totally fine after decades! We will see what the status is in 2024 and are hoping everything is great until then!

Here we are on the way to our plastic surgery and Breast Clinic appointments!

Pregnancy and Breast Cancer Previvorship

Our youngest sister is a 27-year-old breast cancer previvor (center in the above photo). She is currently 21 weeks pregnant with her first child (a girl due in February 2022!), and is going through preventative breast cancer screenings at Mayo Clinic’s Breast Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She started her journey of preventative MRIs, ultrasounds, and breast biopsies in 2019, and is still breast cancer free after her latest checkin with her Breast Clinic doctor in October 2021! Everything looked “normal and healthy” on physical exam and her breast biopsy site from December 2019 has even almost disappeared. 🙂

She’s been seeing our Breast Clinic doctor for 3-month clinical exams during her pregnancy to keep a close eye on things and is having targeted ultrasound checks every 6 months as well. Her next ultrasound and clinical exam will be in January 2022, right before her delivery in February 2022!, to make sure everything is looking good before she returns in summer 2022 to do another breast MRI (which, according to our doctors, is the “gold standard” for breast cancer detection).

Pregnancy and Survivorship

In April 2021 I had to have a biopsy on the left side of my chest for what appeared on physical exam and ultrasound imaging to be a potential cancer recurrence. It ended up being fat necrosis, or scar tissue, which we were so thankful for! On physical exam this time, there were no areas of concern, and no need for further imaging or biopsies right now! I was thrilled! I’ll go back for another clinical exam in March 2022.

One of the best parts of our checkups with our Breast Clinic doctor this week was that our Breast Clinic doctor changed into the tshirt we bought for her (and all of our Mayo doctors!!) for our appointment(s) We were SO excited to see her in her “superfan” shirt!!! 🙂

Here are my twin sister and her husband at Mayo in Rochester in September 2021, all ready for her brain MRI @ 6am!

Panic, Anxiety, Remission, and Brain MRIs

In early September, my twin sister went to Mayo Clinic for a remission checkup with her oncologist. To start off her day, she had a brain MRI to investigate some symptoms she’d been experiencing for a month including dizziness, vertigo, blurred/double vision, and occasional panic attacks. (Her husband brought her down for her scan, pictured above!)

It all started about two months ago, when my twin sister said she wasn’t “feeling right.” She said that, one day while she was driving home from work, she got to a stoplight and started to get hot. Goosebumps rose up on her neck and she felt like everything around her was moving or shifting but she wasn’t moving. She felt like there was a disconnect between her position and everything around her. As she continued driving, she was pretty light headed and dizzy.

She told me she felt like something inside of her “broke,” and that, ever since then, she felt cognitively off balance like she could pass out at any time. Since then, on an ongoing basis, she was experiencing those symptoms.

She also had some double vision while looking at computer at work that same week, and woke up a couple nights that week with panic attacks. “This is very unlike me,” she said. “I feel like I’m not firing on all cylinders and that’s frustrating because I feel slower at my job and with my family. I feel like something’s wrong. Like I had a stroke.”

So our entire family encouraged her to send her oncologist a message to explain all of this, which she did. My twin sister explained how she was worried these symptoms may signify a cancer recurrence in her brain or central nervous system, and asked him for guidance. He ordered her a brain MRI for the same day as her appointment with him so he could interpret the images before their in-person meeting.

Unfortunately, brain cancer and anxiety/panic disorders have a lot of the same symptoms, so we weren’t quite sure what to make of the situation besides trusting that God had a perfect plan. Our entire family was pretty nervous waiting the week until the brain MRI and her oncology appointment. One night that week I woke up crying, and realized there was a song playing in my head: “Battle Belongs” by Phil Wickham. The chorus goes like this:

When I fight I will fight on my knees with my hands lifted high

Oh God, the battle belongs to you

Every fear I lay at your feet

I’ll sing through the night

Oh God, the battle belongs to you

As I woke up, my cheeks were wet with tears, and I realized that, by playing that song in my head, God was telling me straight up that my sister’s battle was HIS, not mine. Just like the song says, “nothing can stand against the power of our God.” It wasn’t my job to worry about my sister–but instead to trust that God was fighting this battle for her and had this all under control.

Emboldened by this promise that God had things under control :), I started texting our prayer warriors: “I wanted to ask if you guys could pray today / tomorrow for Steph’s 4-month breast cancer check-up with her oncologist tomorrow morning at Mayo and because of some dizziness, vertigo and double vision she’s been experiencing for a few weeks now her oncologist ordered a brain MRI to make sure there’s nothing serious going on! She’s pretty freaked (we all are) and has been asking specifically for prayers for a “super boring MRI and checkup” and that just like her hip a few months ago that there would be “a clear and non-serious-and-non-cancer-related explanation for all this!!” Her appointments will be over by tomorrow afternoon so I will send an update tomorrow when we know what’s going on!! Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement… they mean the world!!”

The night before her test, my sister said she was nervous but had peace knowing that she would have the test over with soon and she’d know exactly what was going on. I reminded her that the army of gnomes in the MRI tube that I met the first time I had an MRI was waiting to say hi!! 🙂 So off she and her husband went to a 6am MRI followed by a day full of Mayo appointments like they’d done so many times before!!

Here goes my twin sister into her brain MRI bright and early at 6am!

What a Brain MRI is Like

For those who are curious, this is what my twin sister’s brain MRI was like. First of all, my twin sister has been through a breast MRI and a hip MRI in the past two years, and has now experienced a brain MRI, too. She didn’t know quite what to expect except that, after her scan, she’d know if she had brain cancer or had had a stroke at some point in the recent past that would have caused the anxiety and panic symptoms she was experiencing.

When she got back to the MRI tube, she had three nurses with her that got her prepped on her back on the table in a gown. She laid down on the MRI table as a plastic bracket covered by a sheet came up by her head and around her ears (for a look at what this looks like, check out this photo on Mayo’s website. #claustrophobia!!)

She put earplugs in, had a mask on because of #covid, had to put earmuffs over her earplugs and laid back on the table as a heavy, metal-looking “storm trooper” mask came down and locked into the plastic constraint.

Essentially, her head was locked into a box, she couldn’t hear, and could hardly breathe. Thankfully, her nurses were friendly!, and they gave her a comforting pat on her leg as she got shot back into the MRI tube–which she said felt kind of like the Mission:Space ride at Disney World (haha).

My sister told me she made the mistake of opening her eyes and looking up at one point. She saw the mask and the plastic cage and the lid of the MRI only a few inches above her face, and she was acutely aware she was in a small enclosed space and her head was locked in a box. It was then she said she realized why they sedate people or put blindfolds on people for tests like these. Ha!

When the first set of images was complete, they shot her out of the tube and got the Gadalinium IV contrast started. Then they shot her back in for a last round of imaging. She said she tasted a little metal when the contrast started but other than that everything was fine! Then it was over! 

At one point she said she was considering pushing the panic button but realized all that would do was postpone the inevitable. She was going to have to finish this test and by golly if she hit that panic button she would just have to go right back in! So she mustered up all the courage she could and kept herself in that tube!

Thumbs up all around as we were SO EXCITED for her wonderful oncology appointment with no signs of cancer at 6 months post-chemo!!!

Receiving the “ALL CLEAR!”

Waiting for the oncology appointment to interpret my sister’s brain MRI felt like forever.

Even though we were all freaked out–and reminded of the times my sister had an ovarian cancer scare in fall 2020 and a hip metastases scare this past spring–her brain MRI ultimately ended up being the best thing that could have happened because it gave us a clear baseline image of everything going on in her brain–which turned out to be totally nothing out of the ordinary, praise God!!!

When we finally got called back into my sister’s oncology appointment, a doctor–but not her oncologist–walked into the room. That made me nervous because I didn’t know who he was.

He came in and sat down and said he was working with my sister’s oncologist–it turns out he was a resident who got to meet with my sister before her oncologist did.

He sat down and introduced himself and asked my sister to explain what was going on. I wanted to scream: “CAN YOU JUST TELL US WHAT THE MRI SAID??!!!!!”

She summarized her symptoms from the past month or so for a few minutes and then, mercifully!, the doctor said:

“I’ll give you the good news: The MRI showed no evidence of brain disease. It was negative for stroke and TIA. Now that we found out what it’s not, we’re going to try to figure out what it IS!”

“PRAISE GOD!!!!” I exclaimed. My dad started clapping in the corner of the exam room. My sister’s husband fist pumped the air. We were SO relieved it wasn’t a brain trauma or cancer related!!!!!

“I’m going to go discuss all of this with your oncologist and we’ll be right back!” the doctor said.

When they both came back in the room, the resident and her oncologist took another 20 minutes to ask her questions and conduct a physical exam.

At the end of everything, her oncologist and the resident agreed that, because of the recent stress she’d been under at work, in selling her house and buying a new one, and heading into her 4-month remission visit with her oncologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, her symptoms were likely the result of anxiety or panic.

“I hear this all the time–my patients go through such an intense period of chemotherapy treatments with no time to process things that only later does a lot of stuff come up, especially after infusions stop and there’s all that stuff left over to work through,” my sister’s oncologist told her.

To address her (noncancerous!!!) symptoms, over the past few weeks, my twin sister has had appointments with doctors including: a) her oncologist, b) an integrative medical specialist, c) nutritionist, d) physical therapist, e) chiropractor, and f) counselor. She is seeing a local counselor on a regular basis and starts “Breast Cancer Boot Camp” with a psychologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in October 2021, so prayers are appreciated for those appointments as she goes through them.

Thanks to awesome appointments with all of these God-given medical practitioners, she’s discovered she’s been struggling with anxiety/panic rather than anything purely physical, and is on the road to healing!

My sisters and I are SO thankful for our care team at Mayo Clinic and we will go back and see Mayo in 2022!!!

Next steps!

Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouragement!! Breast cancer previvorship and survivorship definitely isn’t for sissies. We’re grateful for God’s faithfulness and the great cloud of witnesses encouraging us along the way. 🙂

Here are our next steps:

October 2021: My twin sister starts “Breast Cancer Boot Camp” with a Mayo Clinic psychologist for her cancer survivorship journey! Also, my baby is due October 25th!

January 2022: Our youngest sister has her next clinical exam and ultrasound with our Breast Clinic doctor; my twin sister will start her “timed break” from Tamoxifen; my twin sister will check in with her oncologist and gynecological oncology team before she starts IVF.

February 2022: Our youngest sister is due with her first baby (it’s a girl!)

March 2022: My twin sister starts the IVF process with a fertility clinic and I have my next follow-up appointment with our doctor at Mayo Clinic’s Breast Clinic!

Breast cancer screenings may not be fun but we are grateful we get to do them together 🙂