BOISE, Idaho - Somewhere among 14,000 people expected at the Komen Race for the Cure Saturday will be a special family of five: Kate, Chad, Claret, Treysen and Jumelle.
That all five of the Brusses are there can be attributed to one thing: determination.
Kate found a lump in her breast about 24 weeks into her pregnancy with triplets last summer. She was about a month into 12 weeks of bed rest awaiting the births at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise.
Now, Kate says she's a survivor because she listened to her body, not to doctors who told her not to worry. And as women from around the nation gather to raise money to stop the disease, Kate's message for women is this: Don't lose your needs in the midst of taking care of everyone else, and be sure to make informed decisions.
At the hospital last summer, Kate was just concerned about having healthy babies. Though she has a family history of breast and ovarian cancer, the women tended to be older when struck with the diseases.
Her first indication was a surprise.
"Chad was giving me a hug goodbye one morning," Kate said. " ... and I felt a hard lump on me, and I was kind of like, `Is there something hard in your pocket hurting me?' But it was me." The lump was secondary to her immediate goal of having healthy babies. That meant getting to at least 35 weeks. Everything centered on the babies: Her food. Her medicines. Her emotional outlook.
She was relieved when doctors dismissed the lump as normal, something that happens during pregnancy, and when an ultrasound showed nothing of concern. But three weeks later, Kate noticed the lump had grown.
Kate, 34, and Chad, 39, met in 2002 and married in 2004. She started as a Boise and Garden City neighborhood reporter for the Statesman in 2006.
When they decided to start a family, they endured 18 months of negative pregnancy tests and specialists. Finally, they got a positive result and an ultrasound that revealed twins, which run in Chad's family. A week later, another test revealed a third heartbeat.
Kate, who secretly wanted three children, was ecstatic. Chad, who wanted just two, was in shock. A quiet man not prone to taking risks, he realized his family had a long stretch ahead and that not all triplets survive.
They planned for Kate to be on bed rest at home, beginning as early as 20 weeks. But at 21 weeks, mild contractions sent her to the hospital.
A focused woman, Kate set about making the hospital room her own. She brought in objects that helped her remain calm. She surrounded herself with visitors with upbeat attitudes. She hung a calendar to mark the babies' daily progress.
Then came week 24, and the lump. Despite reassurances that it was normal, she had a nagging thought that cancer kills women in her family.
When she saw a coin-sized spot of blood on her shirt, Kate talked to one of her four high-risk obstetricians. He, too, told her not to worry. The next day, she pushed a fourth doctor, who consulted a surgeon.
"And I was like, whoa, a surgeon? I'm going to have surgery?" she said. "I didn't know for sure, but ... ." She credits those doctors with saving her life, but she also knows her persistence did, too. Even this week, the emotions of that day overwhelm her.
"I just thought it was the sickest, most wrong thing that could happen to me," she said, fighting back tears. "I mean, here I have these babies who need me, and this cancer was taking away from them and from me what I would be able to give to my babies." Kate had watched her mother and aunt die because they waited too long before catching their diseases. Pushing the doctors meant that Kate caught her own cancer - ductal carcinoma in situ - in stage one.
"I lived with my family in fear," she said. "The same fear my mother and my aunt lived with watching my grandmother die. ... But by the time my mother had her ovarian cancer removed, one tumor was the size of a football and the other was the size of a grapefruit.
"If you live with that kind of fear, it's almost worse than the cancer."
Kate and Chad now had two worries: having healthy babies and ridding Kate of the cancer.
The babies were delivered by Caesarean section Aug. 25 at 33 weeks gestation. They were small but healthy. And Kate had a goal.
"My pregnancy had been so not normal that I wanted to breast feed," she said. "That was the only normal thing I was going to be able to do." So she focused on a new deadline. For about 10 days, she pumped milk from one breast to help nourish her children. Then a surgeon removed the other breast.
Before starting 12 weeks of chemotherapy that ended Jan. 22, she waited two months so she could nurse. "We took as many days as we could." On Feb. 26, the other breast and her ovaries were removed as a precaution. She has the mutant gene that makes her prone to breast and ovarian cancer.
"It was better to go ahead for me - maybe not for other women - but for me, to be brave and remove those body parts under a controlled decision you make - than do it later with the cancer in it and you're totally out of control," she said. "I have a family who needed me, and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen again." Throughout the Brusses' nearly three-year journey, friends and family shrouded them, took care of chores and helped with the children.
Kate still feels fatigued sometimes, but she recovering.
"I just shudder to think what would have happened if I had listened to that doctor, dropped the subject and had my babies," she said.
Today, the future looks brighter. The cherub-faced babies gurgle and laugh as they play with bright-colored toys in the family's Meridian, Idaho, home.
Kate cringes to think that someone would pity her or feel they couldn't muster her strength. She wants to be seen differently.
"As a happy woman who is on her way to being completely whole and healthy again," she said. "To lose your breast, it just is pretty emotional. And your body image sort of changes. But then after awhile you kind of get used to it, and you start to see that you are beautiful and strong still.
"I mean, I'm not my ideal right now, but I'm alive."
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(Michelle Edmonds of Today's 6 news contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2008, The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho). Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.