‘Listen to Your Mother’

GO & D0 ‘Listen to Your Mother’

When: 7 p.m. today

Where: Walton Arts Center in Fay

etteville

Tickets: Sold out; for wait list infor

mation, call (479) 443-5600

Information: listentoyourmother

show.com/nwa or waltonartscenter.org

Eileen Jennings found out she had breast cancer the first week of December 2012,but she said she wasn’t surprised to find it was happening to her.

She was high risk for breast cancer because her mother, her maternal aunt and maternal grandmother had had it.

“I knew it was astrong possibility,” she said.

Her mother was diagnosed in 1992 at age 35 and passed away in 1999.

“I was in junior high when mymom was diagnosed, so I’ve had 20-plus years of kind of dealing with this kind of stuff in some form or fashion.”

Jennings, 34, had routine mammograms and MRIs every six months at the Breast Center in Fayetteville during the last eight years. Because of her family history, though, she said every six months she would kind of convince herself that she was going to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Jennings is one of the cast members of the “Listen to Your Mother” show today at the Walton Arts Center and will be givinga reading comparing what her mother went through to what she is going through, noting how they’re similar but hopefully not the same. “Listen to Your Mother” features live readings by local writers on the beauty, the beast and the barely-rested of motherhood, in celebration of Mother’s Day, according to the Listen to Your Mother NWA website.

There are multiple productions across the nation this year, and every cast member will be reading one story from one specific point in their life, Jennings said.

Jennings was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, which meant the cancer cells were sitting inside a duct but the duct had not been compromised.

“I just described it as a blob of jelly sitting in one my ducts,” she said.

It was an early stage cancer, she noted. She decided to get a double mastectomy with reconstruction, and she did not have to have chemotherapy or radiation “because the margins from the cancer came back clear.” Because of her family history and testing positive for the BRCA2 gene, doctors recommended she undertake an aggressive treatment and she didn’t resist.

She was told they might be able to save her nipples and areolas, but she recalled saying, “I don’t really care.”

Many doctors lead with aesthetics when talking about breast cancer and reconstruction.

“I just really didn’t care about any of that. It was lower on my priority list,” she said. “I’m just coming at it from a much different perspective than most women. I saw what happened with my mother, and I saw her be very sick.”

She was focused on long-term health and normal activity with her 4-year-old daughter, Scout.

“I also had had many years to wrap my head around this whereas I visit with other women, and they’re still in just a very surreal place.”

Scout knows that her mom had surgery on her chest, Jennings said. Jennings has 5-inch scars across each breast, so she said she has “been a lot more modest than I used to be in front of her.” She doesn’t really talk about the cancer with her daughter, though. Scout has asked why she had surgery, and Jennings told her that doctors saw something in mommy’s body that could make her sick later on.

With the whole family, it has been “not so much about the cancer but just the recovery from the surgery.”

“We all felt pretty confident that everything had been caught early enough,” she said.

After the mastectomy, a pathology report showed that she’d had cancer in both breasts that had not been evident on the MRI or mammograms she had, and the cancer she hadbeen initially diagnosed with was not the one to be worried about.

“I actually had a more aggressive cancer in that same breast,” she said.

If it had been found a year from now, she said her treatment plan likely would have been a lot different.

“That was probably the most kind of emotional part because it was just really scary to think that we could have missed it this year. I feel good that we caught it when we did,” she said.

She added that it was confirmed last week that she would need to have a complete hysterectomy in July. Her cancer was estrogen and progesterone receptor positive. Those hormones “make the cancer grow,” so the estrogen needs to be taken away.

Jennings is feeling good now and is in the middle of the reconstruction process.

She has to go to her doctor every few weeks to fill up the implants, and she has about a month left.

Jennings said she wanted to share her story in the “Listen to Your Mother” production because, although she is not a writer, she finds it to be a good challenge. She submitted a story last year, but it wasn’t very focused. After herdiagnosis, she knew she would be home and writing more, and the story she is sharing just kind of happened, she said.

Jennings also has a blog called Tall Boots and Big Girl Panties, and on top of the page is the phrase “Pull them on and get going!” She said this is more or less her attitude.

“I’m not very sympathetic to people that kind of just wallow in what’s going on,” she said. “I like to fix things.”

She started this particular blog in January, and she said she has been surprised by the response she has received from it.

“I think the fact that I’m incredibly open about it is refreshing to a lot of women,” she said of her breast cancer journey.

She noted that there has been so much about her situation that has been “screamingly funny.” She feels that the more information women have the better; it helps them feel more in control in a situation they can’t really control, she said.

She said being part of “Listen to Your Mother” has been humbling and comforting. She added it has been good to put herself out there and talk about her mother.