Sendy Hall has always been a helper, a woman who helps others in their time of need. As a registered nurse in the emergency room at Tyler Holmes Memorial Hospital, Hall has pretty much seen it all. Nothing surprises her anymore, especially after she fought cancer and won. She may be shaken, but she’s not easily broken.
Hall said she was diagnosed back in November 2016.
“I didn’t do self-examinations, I was guilty of that. I had a mammogram done in 2014, and it was negative. I skipped 2015, and I had one done in March 2016,” adding that she had one done, months before she was diagnosed and it came back negative.
She said it’s important for people to know what’s going on with their own bodies.
“You have to know your body, male or female,” Hall said. “You have to start self-examinations early. When I began my treatments, there was a 19-year-old that was finishing her treatments and a gentleman that was taking treatment as well. Breast cancer knows no age, sex or race. It doesn’t discriminate.”
It was knowing her body that led Hall to request another mammogram months after she received a negative one.
“I felt like something wasn’t right, so I had another one done,” Hall said and this one came back positive. She said she was at work when she received the news. “The doctor called me. It’s never a good thing when the doctor calls you instead of the nurse. You know it bad news then.”
Sure enough, the doctor told her she had breast cancer. “I just stood outside, stone faced,” she said.
Hall said she had to regroup pretty fast and get back to work taking care of sick patients who can sometimes dump their problems onto nurses and doctors, all while reeling in her own news.
“I just had to keep going,” she said. “I’m a believer that God gives his strongest battles to his soldiers, and I’m one of his soldiers.”
Hall said she took chemo every three weeks for a year and after taking her treatment, she went back to work.
“Bills don’t care that you have cancer,” she said. “There were times that I felt so bad. You have to have a really good support system around you. My sister, Jerry Prince, would come and cook for me, and my aunts would come clean up my house.”
According to the American College of Radiology and the Society of Breast Imaging, African-American women are at a higher risk to get breast cancer. It is also more aggressive in African American women, and the treatment has to be just as aggressive to combat it.
“Chemo is horrible,” Hall said. “Losing my hair didn’t bother me. I knew that my hair was going to come out, but I didn’t know it would come out so quick.”
She said her hair came out after her first treatment, three weeks later. “When I went for my second treatment, I had no hair at all. I lost all of my hair. It’s slowly coming back but my eyelashes – seem like they’re never coming back. I had to wear lashes because I don’t have any.”
She said treatment for her was rough. “There were days were I couldn’t get dressed. I couldn’t do personal hygiene stuff, I had to call my sister. There were also times where I couldn’t walk, I had to hold the wall to even get down the hall.”
Hall said it wasn’t for her support system, she doesn’t know how she would have made it. “My family, friends were there for me. My work family they supported me so much, if it was something I couldn’t do, they would go the extra mile for me to get it done.”
For Hall, having a good support system made all the difference.
“You have to have people you can talk to,” she said. “Someone whose shoulder you can cry on. You have to talk about it and get it out.”
She said her daughter Demya Fleming would help to keep things light by joking with her. “She would poke fun at me and call me Caillou, the cartoon on PBS.”
Hall said sometimes Fleming would come sit with her in the living room if she was up moving around but if she was feeling down, Fleming would go to her room. “I don’t think she really knew how to cope with my illness.”
Hall said she feels like cancer strengthened her walk with Christ and she isn’t ashamed to share her testimony.
“You have to share your story,” she said. “You have to tell someone.”
