Life after cancer: For Belinda, it's a 'new normal'

It's a few days after her birthday -- a birthday Belinda Phillips celebrated a little differently this year. The DeLand woman turned 55 on March 4 and had her last radiation treatment for breast cancer a few days later.

She walks into the treatment center looking fresh and rested in a blue suit, carrying a decorative fan that cools her hot flashes. Phillips has a pattern of selecting significant days for medical procedures -- she had her ovaries removed on Valentine's Day this year. Ovaries produce estrogen, which feeds her type of breast cancer. So, because of the treatment's effects on her hormones, Phillips is now experiencing menopause. She fans herself and changes into a hospital gown for her final radiation treatment. Her core medical treatment ends with radiation therapy and a course of an anti-hormonal drug. Phillips passes a plastic bin with a sign: "Turbans, Help Yourself." The bin is actually empty, but Phillips doesn't need a turban. She wears a perfectly styled, strawberry blond wig that complements her natural coloring. Lifting the wig, she reveals a soft layer of her own hair, still too short for her taste. In July 2004, Phillips found a lump in her breast during a monthly self-exam, which doctors identified as malignant. Soon thereafter, she had a lumpectomy followed by chemotherapy. Ironically, Phillips teaches radiation therapy at Halifax Medical Center, where her former students are now using their skills on their teacher. Sheila Garthwaite, chief therapist for radiation oncology at HMC, graduated from Phillips' class 21 years ago. "It's a lot of fun treating someone who does your evaluation every year," says Garthwaite. The radiation therapy area is an odd mixture of institutional gray furnishings with a lighted, stained glass ceiling. In the radiation room, Phillips lies on a monstrously large machine. Garthwaite adjusts the complicated metal arm that targets Phillips' tumor, then leaves the room to watch the patient on a computer monitor as the procedure begins. Phillips says she feels excited that her medical treatment is ending, and looks forward to feeling normal again. The treatments have taken a toll on Phillips at times. Fatigue is the most common effect of radiation, and Phillips' radiation oncologist, Dr. Joyce Battle, stresses that rest is the best remedy. The chemotherapy caused her a great deal of discomfort, and exhausted her physical and mental resources for a period of time. "For myself, I always think that if I do the right things -- everything they told me to do -- I'd be able to carry on with my life, but it was just too hard," Phillips says. "You can do everything you're supposed to do and still feel really bad." But she feels better now and is considering breast reconstruction, something that she had not previously wanted. "After the second surgery, they had to go back in and re-excise more tissue, and, when they did that, it created a greater defect in the breast," Phillips says. "When you look at yourself in the mirror and you see a difference, and a scar, it's always a reminder." Of course, she knows breast cancer has changed her, and that life will be different from before July 2004, when she first felt a lump under her skin. She keeps in mind what her radiation oncologist advised.

"Dr. Battle told me: 'You will have a new normal. And it's going to be good