And a writer is born

By NOREEN HYSLOP

Managing Editor

BERNIE, Mo. - Becky Dennington always wanted to be a writer. From the time she was a little girl growing up in Bernie, she hoped that some day her name would appear on the front of a book as the author. She didn't know what subject she might want to write about, only that she wanted her name on the cover. This week, her wish will come true.

The irony in the release of Dennington's book release, though, is that it took her worst nightmare to materialize in order for her lifelong dream to come true.

"It's true," Dennington confirms from her Bernie nail salon. "What began as every woman's nightmare has turned into one of my greatest blessings."

In June 2010, Becky saw her caregiver for a routine exam. During a breast examination, her caregiver located a suspicious lump in Becky's right breast.

"I hadn't noticed it at all, but I was only 35 and there was no history of breast cancer in my family. I'd never had a mammogram. Once my doctor indicated where it was, there was no problem locating it. It was so obvious."

In the days that followed, Becky and her husband, Kelley, made trips for an ultrasound and a mammogram and further diagnostics. A needle biopsy followed. The day after the biopsy was performed, Becky Dennington got a phone call.

"I'd been nervous all day," she recalls. "But I was still thinking that nothing was going to happen to me - not me. I just knew that it wasn't going to be anything."

On July 15, 2010 she was told over the phone the lump was malignant. Becky had invasive and non-invasive ductal carcinoma.

Her first reaction was one of defiance. She is the eldest of three children born to her mother and father, but she is the only surviving child. One sibling died shortly after birth and the other in a tragic auto accident before she was three years old.

"One of my first thoughts was, 'No, I will not allow my parents to lose another child. It is NOT going to happen."

The couple elected to travel to St. Louis to have the lump removed at Siteman Cancer Center. There on Aug. 2 she underwent a lumpectomy. A mastectomy was not necessary, but two lymphnodes that were removed revealed the cancer had spread to the lymphatic vessels. Chemotherapy and then radiation were prescribed.

Weeks of chemo took place in St. Louis. The couple became all too familiar with the route to Barnes Hospital. When radiation followed, Becky opted to remain in the city for six weeks.

"Our children were 14 and 10, and Kelley really needed to be home with them," she explains. "They could visit me, but we decided the children really needed him close by."

Becky's stay was at the Hope Lodge, operated through donations to the American Cancer Society.

For the first time in years, the wife, business owner, and mother of two found she had time on her hands. While undergoing chemotherapy, she had good days and bad, and many uncertain days when her stamina was unpredictable. The decision was made to close her salon that she'd operated since 1999 until she was back on her feet. It would be a full year before her doors would reopen.

Along the path of her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment, Becky found comfort in putting down her thoughts, often including her innermost feelings, in the form of an online blog. Friends could log in to read of her progress, her trials and her triumphs. The nearly daily accounts of her fight against cancer and the effects of her treatment served not only as her own personal therapy, but also as a record of doctor's visits and reactions to treatment. There were excerpts that told how Kellie and Becky Dennington told their children of their mother's cancer and how they worked at keeping a positive attitude at home.

"I became very weepy soon after my diagnosis, and Kelley explained to the kids that some days I was just going to be sad, but that didn't mean anything was wrong; it was just how things were sometimes."

The chemotherapy treatments eventually robbed Becky of her long, blonde hair. The loss, she says, was devastating. When baldness became a reality, she recorded on her website: "Like someone who loses a limb might suffer phantom pains, even months after chemo robbed me of my golden locks I still had the compulsions to live as if my hair hung across my shoulders and down my back. Mallory giggled at me one day as I got dressed. As I pulled my shirt over my head and straightened it into place, she pointed out that without knowing it, I had gently raked my fingers across the sides of my neck as if freeing hair that was no longer there from the collar. The realization of what I had done was enough to get me tickled but sent a small stab through my heart."

The chronological diary of her year battling the disease she thought would never be hers, soon caught the attention of more than just family and friends. Guest readers were voicing their support from across the country. Becky soon had a following who cheered her on through the journey she never asked to take.

Then one day in December, about halfway through her treatment, a dear friend, Cory Blocker, called her.

"Cory had been in touch with a publishing company in Reno, Nevada," she recalls. "He said he had pitched my blog to a this publishing company and they wanted to offer me a contract."

The blog had been just an avenue through which to express her thoughts, Becky says.

"It never crossed my mind that it might every go any further than that."

But Becky Dennington was touching lives with her words. She was serving as an inspiration to many she never met and likely will never meet. Other cancer patients and survivors chimed in with comments online. Word was spreading of this courageous woman in Bernie, Mo. who was journalizing her account of battling breast cancer.

The day after Blocker told the Denningtons about the publisher, Lazy Day Publishing, Becky had a contract in her hands.

The rest is history, Becky says. She continued writing on her blog and the publishing company continued taking excerpts from her writings. The portions of her writings that are found in her book have been removed from the online blog at www.deepthoughtsbybeck.blogspot.com, but ample entries remain from which inspiration springs each day for the unsuspecting reader.

Becky Dennington's book, "Me and the Ugly C," won't appear as a hardback book, at least not this week. On Wednesday, Oct. 5, though, it will become available as and "e-book," an electronic digital version of a printed book that may be purchased through amazon.com or Barnes and Noble and read on an electronic device such as a Nook or a Kindel. A print version may become available at a later date.

As a plus, Dennington learned recently that Lazy Day Publishing will be donating all of their proceeds from the book to 18 Fore Life, the local charity organization that provides funds directly to cancer patients in the area who are undergoing treatment. It is a charity that is near and dear to the Dennington family, having been recipients themselves of an 18 Fore Life love offering during their challenge with the disease.

On her blog, Becky speaks of the irony in becoming a published author as a result of her illness. The entry reads: "I have written little things since as far back as I can remember. And never completed a thing. Ideas for a story would wake me, pulling me out of bed, dragging me to paper to jot my thoughts down before sleep robbed them from me. And that's where they stayed. Midnight ideas scribbled on paper. Who would have ever thought that this enemy of mine, this thief that tried to steal me away, this breast cancer that showed its ugly face and tried to hurt me and the ones I love, would be the thing that helped me reach my dream? So, how do you like THAT cancer? You stepped into MY world and I defeated you! And the best part...you came in to steal my joy! Instead, I found joy IN you!"

And so, a writer, a published author, and more importantly, a survivor, is born.