Here is Kimberly's story.
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| Kimberly Ray by Jennifer Magar As Printed in the October 2010 issue of Rochester Woman Magazine |
When Kimberly went to her doctor for bronchitis in 2008, she had never had a mammogram; she was two years overdue. But Kimberly wasn't worried: she was just 42 years old and didn't have a history of breast cancer in her family. So when her doctor referred her for a mammogram, she almost cancelled the appointment. Rather than hassle with rescheduling, Kimberly went. She was sent for an MRI and then the news came, it was breast cancer.
"I was shocked," Kimberly said of the diagnosis. "I had no breast cancer in my family. I was never a smoker. I was working out." Kimberly had two surgeries and underwent eight weeks of radiation.
As co-host of the radio morning show The Breakfast Buzz with Kimberly and Beck on 98.9 The Buzz, Kimberly continued with her regular schedule during treatment. She says she got through it by simply pretending she didn't have cancer. She awoke at 2:10 a.m. to feed her dogs and cats and went to work. "I never missed a day of work," she said, "We had a show to do." And so she kept busy, spending time with her daughter, living life as if she weren't a cancer patient.
"I didn't want to be the breast cancer radio girl," Kimberly said. She didn't want cancer to dominate the show and wanted to find a way to do what she does best, make listeners laugh. "I had to figure out, how am I going to make cancer funny?"
So Kimberly made an unusual request of her doctor, asking the doctor to take a picture of her tumor after surgery so she could post it on the radio station's website. Kimberly wanted to encourage women to get mammograms by showing them that a tumor just like hers could be in their bodies and they might not know it.
Kimberly said that she, along with co-host Beck and the show's producer, Pat, got through the show by laughing every day. "We laughed our way through it and I never cried once. And maybe that's the message; through the laughter you don't have to cry."
Cancer-free since November, Kimberly recently remarried and is feeling great. She said since being diagnosed with breast cancer, she won't put off things in her life. "I'm not going to let anything get in the way of what I want to do."
