Correspondent photo / Kathryn Adams... Flora Schneider, now 84, had a mastectomy after finding a cancerous lump in her breast in 1984. Since then, she has undergone several surgeries to remove implants and had breast augmentation 10 years ago to make her breasts equal. She remains cancer free.

COLUMBIANA — Flora Schneider has quite the story about living with breast cancer.

It began in 1984 when she felt a lump in her breast the size of a pea along with milky discharge. Her gynecologist checked her out and said not to worry. However, he suggested she see Dr. Karl Wieneke, who was known as the best surgeon in Youngstown. Because he was so busy, she couldn’t get an appointment for several months, but a cancellation enabled her to move up on the list.

“He aspirated the lump and knew from the results that something was wrong,” Schneider said.

She then had a biopsy at Southside Hospital. Following the biopsy, the doctor and her husband came into her room with serious looks on their faces. She was told by the doctor that she had cancer and to come in the following week for treatment. Her choices were to have it treated with an isotope procedure and radiation or a mastectomy.

Schneider said she asked Wieneke, “If I was your wife, what would you do?” He answered, “a mastectomy. That’s when I made the decision.”

“When I told friends and family I had cancer, they were shocked. They saw it as a death sentence,” Schneider, now 84, said.

She admits that she went through some denial. As the doctor talked about the cancer and how it should be taken care of immediately, she looked out the hospital window and thought to herself, “He’s crazy, there’s nothing wrong with me. I feel great, on top of the world.”

The surgery took place the following week and her right breast was removed. Schneider spent 15 days in the hospital recovering. After surgery, she discovered that she was unable to lift her right arm without screaming in pain.

“The visitors who came to see me thought I was going to die. People came and went to see me. Looking at me with tears in their eyes with me saying, ‘Stop, I’m not going anywhere’,” Schneider said.

When she got home, she remembers looking at herself in the mirror and screaming, “I look like a monster! That was the hardest thing.”

Her recovery lasted from March to September when she returned to work as a teacher in North Jackson. When the topic of reconstruction came up, Wieneke recommended a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, who inserted a Dow gel prosthetic implant.

However, the gel started to leak and there was a recall on them, so Schneider had to return to the Clinic to receive an implant filled with saline solution. That saline implant ruptured, so it was back to the Clinic to get another one, which she still has.

Ten years ago, Schneider visited a plastic surgeon to get information about breast augmentation — making the breasts equal and in line with each other. She learned that her right breast needed skin grafting to accomplish this. She had a “transflap” procedure, which means they took muscle from her stomach and “traveled” it up to her breast.

Sometime later, Schneider found a red line on her abdomen that was indicative of infection. She called the plastic surgeon, and “he knew right away what the problem was.”

It was back to the hospital so she could be opened, and have the infection vacuumed out. She was sent home with an open incision that took five months to close.

As a result of all her surgeries, Schneider developed terrible back pain. She visited an orthopedic surgeon and had what is called “roto-rooter” surgery in which they scrape the vertebrae, after which she couldn’t walk for four months. The surgeon “did a terrible job and I went back to the Cleveland Clinic,” where the surgeon fused her vertebrae with two rods and eight screws that gave her relief.

Looking back on all that she’s been through, Schneider said, “Long story short, I am now a 38-year breast cancer survivor. The Lord has given me hell on earth, so I don’t have to go there when I die. I’ve learned to live with my pain and offer it up to God.

“I believe that cancer is also a disease of the mind — how you handle it determines how you will get through it.”

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