Donnie dolls and foot races – how one woman handles her cancer
By Julie Halm
In 2012, Janice Hetrick’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a result, for a time, she went to get mammograms every six months, until her insurance company said that they were no longer necessary at that interval and they wouldn’t be covering the cost every six months any further. It was within the next six months — and three years to the month after her mother’s own diagnosis — that Hetrick heard, “it’s cancer.”
She and her mother had different types of breast cancer and as the mother of two daughters, Hetrick wanted to get genetic testing done. She said that because she was older than 50, her insurance declined to cover that cost.
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center would later offer, however, because among Hetrick’s mother, father, herself and three brothers, only one brother was cancer free.
When her own breast cancer was found, it was on the left side and involved her lymph nodes. Hetrick, a former nurse at St. Joseph Campus in Cheektowaga, said that she elected to take what she felt were the best next steps, which included a double mastectomy.
“It was up to me and when they said lymph nodes, I’m a nurse, I’m not going to mess around,” she said.
One of the hardest parts of her journey was telling her own mother about the diagnosis, she said, adding that her mother felt guilt over the situation. When her own mother was diagnosed, Hetrick’s family decided to do a mud run event, which involves racing and doing physical tasks in muddy conditions, as the name implies.
“It happened to start raining that day and my mom was at the finish line because she was undergoing chemo, and she’s crying because we all finished and we’re all full of mud and so I decided to start doing all of these races for her, so I did like 43 of these races between 2012 and 2015,” said Hetrick. Her own diagnosis would not stop that momentum either. “When I was diagnosed, the day before my surgery, I rapelled the Niagara Casino, and then a week after my double mastectomy I did the Tough Mudder and then after I finished chem and radiation a week later I did a marathon in Florida.”
She has also done numerous biking events, including one cross-state in support of her mom and from diagnosis to present has done more that 350-foot races.
It was during one of those races shortly after a surgery, that participants were supposed to go in a creek. A friend asked what she might have in her car to represent her going into the creek and the best bet was a Donnie Wahlberg doll left behind by one of her grandkids from a recent camping trip. It became a running theme from then on, “wherever I go, Donnie goes,” said Hetrick. Since then, she has gotten to meet Wahlberg and had Donnie dolls signed by the New Kids on the Block founding member.
Other women who receive a breast cancer diagnosis might not choose a Donnie doll as one of their coping tools, but Hetrick said that she would give others the same advice she gave her own brother when he received a pancreatic and liver cancer diagnosis.
“Don’t just sit there, if you want to get up and go for a bike ride, get up and go for a bike ride. You can’t let cancer control you,” she said. “You have to control it.”