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MIDDLETOWN — Before Bridget Beatty was diagnosed with breast cancer, she and her husband were living their dream.
They had been married three years, both were finishing graduate school and had begun planning to start a family.
“Our lives were going in textbook fashion and then we had to put everything on hold,” said her 27-year-old husband, Tim Beatty. “I broke down. It was a horrible feeling. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach.”
Bridget Beatty was diagnosed in May with Stage 2 cancer weeks after discovering a tumor in her breast that grew from the size of a walnut to the size of a lemon in about three months.
“I didn’t cry. My attitude was what do I need to do to fight this,” Bridget Beatty said.
Nationwide, one in three Americans has a chance of developing an invasive form of cancer in their lifetime. Breast cancer is the most common form, affecting 29 percent. Most women diagnosed with the disease are older than 60. Beatty is just 26 and recently learned she carries the gene BRCA1, which increases her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
Doctors in Kentucky enrolled her in a cancer study and she began an aggressive regimen, requiring she take chemotherapy intravenously for an hour and two weeks of eight chemo pills a day.
“It would hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like a shell of myself,” Beatty said. “I sleep from Tuesday to Friday. I’m so tired I don’t remember getting up to go to the bathroom. I don’t remember conversations. I just sleep.” Her husband added: “She doesn’t even have the energy to smile.”
Through it all, Bridget Beatty, a teacher in Middletown Schools, has remained upbeat.
When her hair fell out in clumps, she sobbed briefly then put on makeup, earrings, her snazziest clothes and had her husband give her a Mohawk and posed for a photo spread now on her Facebook page.
Soon after, her husband shaved her head clean. She wears a hat or scarf at times, but no wigs. And is unafraid to show strangers her bald head.
Her husband, Tim, said the strength his wife has shown has inspired him and others and was key to helping the family get through it.
Bridget said the fear that she and her husband may not be able to start a family got her down at points, but said her outgoing personality won’t let her stay down.
“I feel like cancer hasn’t beaten me down. It’s let me know who I am and that I have support,” said Bridget Beatty, who has been inundated with cards and well wishes from students, school staff and her neighbors.
“I’ve always been outgoing. It’s important that people know that just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you’re going to die. I’ve never had that feeling that I wasn’t going to make it.”
The Pink Paper
Join the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on Saturday, Oct. 15 at Fifth Third Field. > Find out how to participate
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