Cancer happens, even when you're young

Laura Hudgens realizes it was all a fluke.

She wasn't one to regularly check her breasts. At 26, she spent her days more focused on her training specialist job at a real estate company and on having fun with friends.

Then, last October, she discovered a lump.

"I found it. And I sat there. It (cancer) crossed my mind," she said. "I Googled 'lumps' but I was like, 'What's a lump?' Then, I was like, 'No way. I'm so young and this doesn't even run in my family."'

Then again, she still wondered: What if?

Hudgens decided to wait until a scheduled physical the next month to ask her doctor, who suggested she see a specialist.

A biopsy in December confirmed the news she had thought to be unfathomable: She had breast cancer at 26.

Her family and friends were just as shocked. "I think everybody just assumes that it happens to older women," said Kathy Menis of Barrington, Hudgens' older sister.

But they quickly rallied around her.

"From hearing people cry, I knew I had to be positive. I didn't want to bring them down," said Hudgens, a Des Plaines native.

"No one knows what to say. But at that point, it kind of just turned into… 'I can't sit here and feel sorry for myself. I have to be strong and fight it.'"

Team Cosmonaut

Menis wanted to do something to show her younger sister that she had a strong base of emotional support to lean on.

She proposed a party with the theme of reaching for the stars, like a cosmonaut, before Hudgens underwent her mastectomy in January.

Menis wanted to send her sister the message: "We're going to be here for you Laura and we're going to reach up as high as we can."

Using the cosmonaut theme also was a play on words -- they would toast with cosmopolitans.

Hudgens, though, had another idea. She wanted to participate in the annual Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, a two-day, 39-mile fundraiser that steps off May 31.

"The turning point for me was really getting diagnosed. I have always wanted to do the walk," Hudgens said.

They could be Team Cosmonaut, she thought.

"I was like, 'That's a good theme for my fundraising parties,'" Hudgens said.

To date, Team Cosmonaut's 48 members have raised about $95,000, ranking first place for fundraising of all the groups participating in the Avon Walk in Chicago. And there's still one more big fundraising event scheduled for May 18, an alumni girls' basketball game at Maine West High School in Des Plaines, Hudgens' alma mater.

"I'm just incredibly proud. I am in amazement of how strong she's been," Menis said. "She just really made up her mind that she was not going to let this get the best of her."

Lessons learned

Hudgens, who now lives in Chicago, faced her breast cancer diagnosis with the highest of hopes.

After hearing she had breast cancer, Hudgens decided to help others.

Her circle of friends and family already is more aware.

Menis, 37, had her first mammogram just after her sister's diagnosis.

Hudgens' friends also have started to think more about their own health.

"A lot of my girlfriends say, 'Oh my gosh, I don't do monthly exams,'" Hudgens said.

Nicky Calhoun, a social worker who helps patients through the American Cancer Society, said she's particularly struck when she works with a 20-something breast cancer patient.

"It's not always on the radar. We're not expecting to see women in their 20s coming in," she said. "It's actually difficult because their life cycle is in a different place."

Issues that Calhoun sees when working with 20-something women range from anger to wanting to know more about their health options.

In Hudgens case, doctors had recommended only removing the lump, but after thinking about the higher odds of the cancer returning after a lumpectomy, she decided to remove the breast.

Since doctors during the mastectomy surgery confirmed the cancer hadn't spread, Hudgens didn't need to undergo chemotherapy or radiation. She had breast reconstruction surgery in April.

If young women do have to undergo radiation and chemotherapy, they have concerns about their fertility options, Calhoun said.

She encourages women to find a support group.

"I think younger people have a harder time finding peers," Calhoun said. "I find it helpful when they hook up with someone in their age bracket and know what they're going through."

Popular resources include the Young Survival Coalition (www.youngsurvival.org), Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization (www.y-me.org) and Planet Cancer (www.planetcancer.org).

For more information about the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer or Team Cosmonaut, visit www.walk.avonfoundation.org.

Basketball benefit

Twenty-five alumni girls basketball players from the Maine West High School classes of 1991 to 2007 will play a charitable basketball scrimmage May 18 in the school's spectator gym, 1755 S. Wolf Road, Des Plaines.

4:30 p.m. Team introductions and tip-off

5:30 p.m. Half-time entertainment, family friendly relays and half-court shot contests

6:30 p.m. Alumni photos

Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for students and children under 12. Refreshments will be available.

Early detection tips

• Women aged 20-39: Should receive a clinical breast examination every three years; monthly self-exam is optional

• Women aged 40 and older: Annual mammogram; annual clinical breast examination; monthly self-exam is optional

Source: American Cancer Society