Returning to the Beach
Barbara Olson

Beach air. It is very different than country air, city air, elementary school air and church air. The beach smell of mid-April 1995 at Gulf Shores was a combination of early spring promise, mornings of untouched sand and sharp winds, and afternoon heat that brought the Easter vacationers out to run through the surf and hunt for shells. For my family and me, this beach trip was a break from rushed schedules and demands, a chance to relax and eat shrimp and burgers daily. My husband would go off to play golf and my daughters and I would head to the water’s edge, me in a chair with a book, and them loaded down with rafts, sunscreen and boom boxes (this was the mid ‘90s!). These are the images of that week that I recalled time and again during my four rounds of chemotherapy that began less than two months after that trip, all unexpected, unplanned and now, a blessing.

A week after my yearly mammogram, I returned home from shopping because of a thunderstorm, and had a telephone call from the Women’s Health Center at Baptist Hospital. They wanted me to come in for more sophisticated testing. I said I would be there in an hour and they agreed. I guess that should have been a red flag. The testing was on Monday, and by Thursday I was in an operating room having a mastectomy and a biopsy. Eventually I had both breasts removed.

hocking was this series of events since our April trip to the beach! I had no previous inkling of a medical problem except that I had been prone to fibrocystic disease and had a biopsy in 1990 that was benign. Our daughters were confused and worried, my husband, at first shaken, and then so strong and always helping, as were my siblings, mother and a large circle of friends. Three weeks following my second mastectomy, I began the first of four rounds of chemotherapy with the strongest drugs available. I lost all my hair including my eyelashes, which in some respects was liberating! At each chemo session, as I sat waiting for the blood test to return for my oncologist to review so that I could have my drug “cocktail” as scheduled, the oncology nurse would remind me to use imaging to overcome the stress of the needles and the medical surroundings as the red, disease-eating drugs dripped through my veins. So where else could I “go” for my images but to that week at that beach in April? Actually, when I closed my eyes and wrapped up in my afghan and slipped my recliner back, I really believe I heard the waves lapping against the sand. No sea gulls “barking,” but definitely the sounds of the ocean, and maybe, the smell of fresh air tinged with salt. While I’m not really confident this did happen, now, 15 blessed and cancer-free years later, I believe it!