our healthcare: BATTLING CANCER
Cancer Waits For
No Woman
By MARSHA BROWN
Julie Temple Didn’t Have Time To
‘Mess,’ With Cancer, But Who Does?
J
“I looked to see if I had a mole
or a cyst and I found nothing,”
Temple said. “So the next day I was
really busy and forgot about it.” She
forgot about the whole thing, until it
happened again.
Finally, she discovered where
the blood was coming from — her
nipple. Temple was at the home of
her godchild who had just had a
baby.
“I asked her if that had ever
happened to her,” Temple said.
The younger woman’s response
was, “No and if it did, I’d be totally
freaked out.” Being a tech-savvy
Millennial, the young woman turned
to Google. After a little research,
the younger woman advised her
godmother, “You need to see a
doctor.” Everything she found on line
pointed to the same thing — cancer.
Temple’s answer was, “Maybe,
when I get this wedding behind me.”
The younger woman was shocked.
ulie Temple is a busy woman. Last
spring, she was working at a fren-
zied pace, operating her own multi-
faceted business that included event
planning and had just landed a job
orchestrating the biggest wedding of
her career.
She definitely did not have time
for cancer.
“I’ve always been a busy kind of
person,” Temple said. “In my busi-
ness I did a little bit of everything
for a few families. I planned events,
I organized, I remodeled, I painted,
[and] I decorated.”
She knew when she took on
the function that she would be a
bit stretched while pulling together
the Cecil B. DeMille-caliber wedding
production, but she didn’t plan on
having serious health problems.
Temple had also taken on a big,
albeit, joyful task.
She was offered the job of taking
care of her longtime friend who had
passed the point in her life when she
was able to manage all of her own
affairs, but did not want to move into
an assisted living center or a retire-
ment home. Temple stepped in.
“I feel like it was my calling,” she
said. “I wanted to make sure that she
could live out her life in her own
home.”
In the new capacity, Temple
took her friend to appointments with
doctors, oversaw her household,
made sure her house was clean, took
care of meals and generally made
sure her bills were paid and her
checkbook was in order.
As Temple juggled all of her
responsibilities, was in the midst of
taking care of her friend and planning
the wedding of the century, she
suddenly found one more big item
had landed on her plate, and it was
enormous.
Temple went home one evening,
and when she was preparing for bed,
got undressed and noticed a spot of
blood in one of the cups of her bra.
“Who puts that off?”
The reaction of everyone else was
almost more frightening to Temple
than what her own body was doing.
“Everyone seemed to be totally
freaked about this,” Temple said.
Temple definitely did not have
time for cancer. But there was
another concern.
“We had great insurance through
my husband’s work,” Temple said,
adding that her husband worked in
the oil industry, but his job went
away with the most recent oil bust.
He soon found a new job but it didn’t
pay near as well and the benefits
weren’t there.
Temple was always an indepen-
dent, generous woman who was used
to doing kind things for others, but
rarely did she let anyone do anything
for her.
She found herself talking to a
friend, a breast cancer survivor who
told her about her health issue, then
asked her friend if she had ever expe-
rienced anything like that.
Her friend said, “I haven’t, but
my grandmother did. It was breast
cancer. She died from it. You need to
get that checked out, right away.”
It was a sobering conversation.
By then, the big wedding, Temple’s
opus, was just two weeks away.
“She had survived breast cancer
and has made it her life’s mission to
see to it that other women survive
breast cancer, too,” Temple said. “I
reminded her that I didn’t have insur-
ance. She said, ‘We might be able to
find you some help.’”
It was that friend who found
Careity and texted Temple the
contact information. Still, she strug-
gled to get up the courage to call.
“I’m used to doing for other people,”
she said, “I’m not used to asking for
help.”
Her friend continued to press her
to call. “I kept saying, ‘I have this
wedding to finish, then I’ll worry
about the boob.’ She said, ‘Now.
You need to take care of this now.’
Finally, I called. Beverly (Branch)
answered. She asked me some ques-
tions. I answered them. Then, she
approved me over the phone. My jaw
dropped.”
Temple told Branch about the
wedding she was handling and
asked, “Don’t you think I could wait
until I finish with the wedding?”
Without hesitation, Branch said,
“No, ma’am.”
Temple burst into tears.
“I suddenly got so emotional that
someone was going to help me,”
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