One Care Package Becomes Hundreds: The Story Behind Courage Kits of Kansas City

Only two days after her 35th birthday, while driving to a play date with her two-year-old twin boys in the backseat, Heather received the news that she had breast cancer.

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A young, active, and healthy mom with no history of breast cancer in her family, Heather wasn’t looking for cancer. Instead, she discovered it by accident when she brushed across a lump while in the shower – something that felt like a “chewed up piece of gum.”

That lump turned out to be aggressive cancer, and it would require aggressive treatment: two rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and five weeks of daily radiation.

In short, Heather would battle breast cancer. It’s hard to stomach the list of all she endured during the course of her treatment:

  • She lost all of her hair, including leg hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. Heather says, “I HATED looking like an alien with no eyebrows, so I attempted to draw them on every morning.”
  • She experienced extreme depression three days after each cycle – a side effect of the steroids she had to take.
  • She developed painful mouth sores and lost her ability to taste, making it difficult to eat anything.
  • Her skin was burned like a sunburn from the radiation, and one area of her skin even looked like a cigarette burn.
  • She lost both of her own breasts, replacing them with what she calls “foobs” (fake boobs). Then, shortly after receiving her permanent implants, an incision broke open and she had emergency surgery to replace the exposed implant.
  • She still takes a pill every morning and receives an injection every three months which produce side effects similar to menopause, such as hot flashes.

Those are just the physical side effects.

Heather also knows what it’s like to fear whether or not she’ll get to watch her children grow up or if she will be able to grow old with her husband. She knows the feeling of guilt and responsibility cancer brings, even though there is no fault and no explanation. She knows what it is like to have no good answer to that haunting question, “Why?”

 “After my diagnosis, I felt a strange guilt for bringing such a sad thing into our family. I found myself repeating ‘I am so sorry’ in my head over and over again, to no one in particular – I just felt so bad for the fear and sadness my family and friends would experience.”

Her family and friends did indeed enter into the sadness of her breast cancer journey, but their involvement has become part of her story’s beauty, too. Heather says again and again how grateful she is for her strong support system that stuck by her side – her husband, parents, relatives, and so many friends … even some she had never met.

 “My boys were born prematurely in 2010. Following their birth, I joined an online support group of 15 women. In August of 2013, two of those women, who I had never met in person, conspired with my husband and flew in from Minneapolis to surprise me on the day I completed my final day of the first round of chemo. Two other women (one of which I had never met) drove up from St. Louis to spend time with me. In addition, all of the women in the group who couldn’t be there in person flooded my Facebook page with encouragement, wearing shirts they had designed for the occasion, to offer support. It was AMAZING having those women in my home, sitting on the deck, watching our kids play together and eating some delicious BBQ.”

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One of those friends also surprised Heather by doing some online research about chemotherapy, and she collected several items to help Heather while she went through her treatments. The friend then sent those items in a thoughtful care package – a very meaningful gift for Heather.

“I loved knowing that someone was thinking about me and had taken the time to figure out what I might need. After finishing chemo, surgery and radiation, I wanted to do something to pay it forward, with all of the help I had received in mind.”

So, when Heather finally finished her treatment, that care package became the impetus for her idea to give back – even after battling a disease that had taken so much. Heather reached out to her friends on Facebook, asking for their support to create more care packages for women going through cancer. The response was overwhelming, and soon Courage Kits of Kansas City was born. With the help of her supporters, Heather is able to purchase items like snacks, DVDs, socks, lotion, and more. She then assembles the items into care packages and delivers them to other Kansas City women. Already, 100 of these bags have been donated to the University of Kansas Cancer Center, and Heather is working to fill more bags to meet needs as they arise.

It’s a beautiful story of multiplication: one care package becoming hundreds, and one Kansas City woman’s story being written into the stories of so many others.

As she helps women who have been diagnosed with cancer, Heather also encourages those who haven’t had cancer – even those who think their risk is low – to know their bodies.

 “Young women can and do get breast cancer, and it is often more aggressive than the cancer found in older women. Nobody is immune. A fact I didn’t know until I started on this journey is that in the five years following pregnancy, women are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, due to the hormone surges during and following pregnancy.

Also, if you have a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, please remember that a person is NOT THEIR CANCER! They are still your friend, still a mom, daughter, sister, or whatever and probably want to attempt to live their life as ‘normally’ as possible.”

Courage Kits of Kansas City aims to do just that: to affirm the personhood of women who are facing cancer, and to provide a sense of normalcy in the midst of a season that feels far from normal in other ways. Because, as Heather’s story illustrates, any woman can get breast cancer, but any woman can also be part of making a friend’s journey a little more bearable.

To support Courage Kits of Kansas City, you can make a donation or purchase items for the care packages directly from their Amazon wishlist.

Jenna
Jenna lives in Midtown with her husband and two kids (ages 6 and 4). She has an M.A. in English and too many overdue books at the library. She has been working with writers for over a decade, as a high school teacher, college instructor, and writing coach. She loves good coffee, serious conversation, and not-too-serious fiction.