The Lives it Saves - KFVS12 News & Weather Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Poplar Bluff

Heartland teachers, mothers, daughters, musicians, real estate agents, and many more are all breast cancer survivors. And they'll all tell you at first the diagnosis can be tough to deal with. "It's the most traumatic experience of a woman's life," says Charlotte Lanpher a long time breast cancer survivor. "It was kind of like it wasn't happening to me, it wasn't real," says breast cancer survivor Wilma Masters from Altenberg. "When you receive that diagnosis you think you're instantly dead," says Heartland breast cancer survivor and teacher Carol Reimann.  But many of these Heartland breast cancer survivors say their lives were save through one thing, early detection. "I'm through convinced the mammogram saved my life, twice," says Reimann. "Do your self exams but just because you don't feel anything doesn't mean it's not there. Mine was there and I couldn't feel it and neither could the doctors...The mammogram found it," says breast cancer survivor and musician Betty Fadler.  For the first time, the Southeast Missouri State volleyball girls stepped into the breast cancer awareness court raising almost 2-thousand dollars for breast cancer research. The effort was headed by coach Cindy Gannon who lost her mother to the disease. A new effort by breast cancer survivors from the Reach to Recovery group also got underway to help women who are newly diagnosed with breast cancer. If you've got a survivor story please let us know by e-mailing KFVS-12 or calling the station or Southeast Missouri Hospital.