While putting on her pajamas before bed one night, Wendy Lane made a shocking discovery.

“I felt a lump,” Lane said. “From what I could feel, it felt like walnut size.”

Lane, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May, is the office manager for the department of counseling and student development.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women with the probably of one in every eight women having breast cancer in their life, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Lane first found the lump she did not worry too much because she heard that it could be nothing.

“Often times you just have to cut back on caffeine or something,” Lane said.

When she was first told she had cancer, her first thought was to get back to work and get her mind off the subject.

“You hear cancer and you think, ‘Oh my God I’m going to die from this,’ even if it is not from the cancer itself. The treatments lowers your immunity and you can die from phenomena or a cold,” Lane said.

She said she then thought about her family.

“How am I going to tell my loved ones and my two little boys?” she said.

Lane, 39, said she had a regular check-up in March and nothing was there.

She was scheduled for a monogram this year, which is the typical protocol for women with no family history of breast cancer by the age of 40.

With the lump growing fast, Lane and her doctors knew they had to act soon.

“It does not run in my family and I was feeling fine,” Lane said. “It was all really fast, as far as when I found the lump, and when I found out it was cancer. It was a lot of information to take in and very overwhelming.”

She was given different opinions on whether to have surgery or to start chemotherapy from both Sarah Bush Hospital and Mills Breast Cancer Institute in Champaign.

Within two weeks, she was diagnosed with cancer and had started chemotherapy.

The surgeons in Champaign said the tumor was large and they did not want it to spread anywhere else, so they suggested chemotherapy.

Upon recommendations, she started chemotherapy the next week.

She had tests done at Sarah Bush Hospital, and she said knowing the radiologist and technician personally made her feel better about the process.

Lane said being able to ask questions and knowing a friendly face can help with the uneasy feelings.

She has completed her chemotherapy and will have surgery on Nov. 13 at Washington University Hospital in St. Louis.

Lane has never had a major surgery before and said talking to other survivors can help ease the uncertainty of the process.

“There are message boards and cancer cites but it is more personable to sit across from someone and ask them what they went through,” Lane said. “If this person made it through it, then I’m going to make it through it.”

Lane said all the support she has gotten from co-workers, friends and her church community have made the process much easier.

“It’s been overwhelming, crazy and horrible and every emotion you can think of,” Lane said.

People from the First Baptist Church in Mattoon would bring meals to Lane’s house so she did not have to cook while going through chemotherapy.  The Run Away Cancer! 5K Run and Walk that Eastern sponsored on Oct. 11 sent all the proceeds to Lane.

Lane will be returning to campus upon the completion of her surgery.

Bob Shaughnessy can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].