Life for Julie Scholes was going along well. The Glade Park resident had a wonderful marriage, a job she loves, and a healthy and fit lifestyle. But in the spring of 2023, after a strenuous workout, Scholes felt a lump and pain in her chest that stopped her in her tracks.
“I had a really good workout the day before and my chest was really sore. I was feeling that muscle and thought, wait, there’s a lump here and it hurt. I scheduled an appointment with my primary care doctor immediately,” she said.
At 53 years old, she had never missed a mammogram. In fact, she had one just six months prior to discovering the lump. She had no personal history of cancer, and no family history of cancer. Despite all of that, her visit with her primary care physician led her to Cancer Centers of Colorado at Intermountain Health St. Mary’s Regional Hospital for another mammogram, followed by an ultrasound, a biopsy, and the diagnosis she feared.
“Julie was diagnosed with locally advanced triple negative breast cancer, meaning the mass was large. She had lymph node involvement, close to the breast in the armpit. It was very aggressive. It was kind of a beast on its own and was ready to take her life,” explained Alicia Swink, MD, medical oncologist at Cancer Centers of Colorado, St. Mary’s Regional Hospital.
“It was shocking,” Scholes said. “I couldn’t really process it. My stomach dropped, and my mind was just a jumble. I was worried about the quality of healthcare in Grand Junction for something of this magnitude.”
Scholes’s insurance encouraged her to get a second opinion from another healthcare provider. All of her records, test results, doctors’ notes, and the treatment plan from St. Mary’s were provided to the Mayo Clinic for review.
Scholes recalled her consultation with that second oncologist. “She told me, ‘Listen, you’re getting excellent care in Grand Junction. All of the extra tests they’ve ordered would be the same tests we would have ordered. You'd be on the exact same regimen here, as you are there. Except, you’d be traveling every week.’”
Scholes made the decision to continue her treatment with St. Mary’s under Dr. Swink’s care in partnership with radiation oncologist Lucas Gilbride, MD, Page Kanopsic, NP, and breast nurse navigator Nancy Conover-Rafferty, RN.
“Nancy was my go-to. She’s my glue for this entire cancer process. If you envision a wheel with the hub and all the spokes, Nancy is that hub. She's the one that communicates to the doctors, to the pharmacists, to the infusion nurses, to scheduling. She's what holds everything together,” Scholes said.
Dr. Swink agreed. “We do call Nancy our angel. She seems to be everything to every person at just the right time.”
With an arsenal of information, a calendar full of medical appointments and infusion treatments, and her husband by her side, Scholes spent the next 16 months in the fight of her life.
“We had to treat her with the regimen we call the kitchen sink. It consisted of a total of six different chemotherapy drugs, given over about six months. Then she underwent surgery and radiation because the cancer had invaded her chest wall,” Dr. Swink explained.
But it wasn’t until midway through her first phase of chemotherapy that Scholes’s fear turned to optimism. “The tumor started shrinking and disappearing. That’s when I got the first sigh of relief. It’s the first time I thought, I'm not going to die from this, I'm going to beat this.”
And that’s exactly, what she did. Almost 16 months to the date of diagnosis, Scholes walked outside of the Cancer Center, cancer-free and rang the bell, signaling the end of her treatment.
“It’s just a big sigh of relief, and maybe a tad embarrassing because everyone’s looking at you. But, I felt so accomplished. I did it.”
According to Dr. Swink, Scholes’s prognosis is excellent and the likelihood of the cancer coming back is very low. But if it does, Scholes knows where she will seek care.
“St. Mary’s would be my first stop. The friendships that I've formed here have been amazing. The people that work here are top notch.”
“Looking back on Julie’s journey, it's such a gift to know that when we go into these fights, we win. We're winning, and we’re doing better all the time,” Dr. Swink said.