Local Events Celebrate Good Health

If a person had cancer in the early 1960s, he or she might as well have had leprosy. Generally, cancer sufferers were feared and shunned.

“There were no support groups, people didn’t know any better,” said Helen Beebe, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1961 at age 37.

The Simi Valley resident recalled the stigma of her illness at that time. She said society has changed in how it treats cancer patients, and modern medicine has allowed more people to survive the disease.

Half a lifetime later, Beebe, at 74, has lived to see the day when cancer is not necessarily a death sentence and patients are celebrated rather than feared.

She was among hundreds of people who attended various National Cancer Survivors Day celebrations held Sunday throughout Ventura County.

Beebe attended a party held in the garden area outside Simi Valley Hospital, which drew 300 people--cancer survivors, their families and physicians. A similar event sponsored by the Ventura County Medical Center took place at Oxnard State Beach, and across town there was a program at St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

Another celebration, sponsored in part by the American Cancer Society of the Conejo Valley and Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, was held at the Wellness Community Valley-Ventura facility in Westlake.

During nearly four decades, Beebe has seen improvements so dramatic in cancer treatment that the American Cancer Society expects a 50% patient survivor rate by the year 2015. “This is a great day,” Beebe said over a live band’s county music. “It sends a message that cancer survivors are human beings. They are not sick people tucked in the corner somewhere.”

After doctors detected a lump in her right breast, she received an operation known as a “Halstead radical.”

The operation--in which doctors remove the entire breast and the muscles and tissue around it--was the only type of breast cancer treatment available at that time.

“I’ve got nothing but ribs and skin on this side,” she bluntly said, pointing toward the right side of her upper body.

After her surgery, Beebee went on to become a Simi Valley Unified School District principal and later a school board trustee. She retired in 1990. Beebe and others said Sunday’s celebrations across the nation were meant to emphasize that with the current state of medical technology and chemotherapy, cancer can often be beaten.

“There doesn’t have to be a great deal of pessimism out there,” she said.

The recent media reports about Linda McCartney’s death of breast cancer unfortunately didn’t add to the message of hope, she said.

“I can’t help but feel that somewhere along the way, she didn’t get treatment early enough,” Beebe said. “You don’t have to die of breast cancer.”

Jessica Szegedi of Simi Valley had follicular thyroid cancer when she was 4. She is now a healthy 18-year-old Moorpark College student who plans to transfer to UCLA in the fall. She said the Sunday party was a way to heighten public awareness and dispel myths surrounding those living with cancer.

“In first grade, my classmates thought of me as different or weird because of the scars on my neck,” said Szegedi, who underwent surgery to remove the left side of her cancerous thyroid gland. “Throughout elementary school, I was called names like ‘scar face’ and ‘cancer baby.’

“Regardless, I held my head high and tried to excel in everything I did,” she said.

Even today, children with cancer are teased in school, according to some parents. Sue Larimore said her son, Van, is at times called names by his classmates because he has cancer. As a result, Van Jr. doesn’t like to talk about his illness, said Sue Larimore, who attended the event at Oxnard State Beach.

The 7-year-old Ventura boy, however, appears to have beaten neuroblastoma, a cancer that attacks the nervous system.

Four years ago, doctors removed a tumor the size of a baseball lodged on his liver. Then he received a bone marrow transplant in February 1995. One year later he was riding in American Bicycle Assn. races. He’s won 11 races and is working toward becoming an expert cyclist, said his mom.

For Sue Larimore and her husband, Van, Sunday was an important yardstick.

“It means Junior survived another year,” Sue Larimore said.