A local nurse is now a patient after a devastating diagnosis. The young mother and wife is now undergoing chemotherapy after discovering a lump that she thought came from breastfeeding but turned out to be breast cancer.
After the lump didn’t go away, Felicia Bennett went in for an ultrasound, then a biopsy. Then came the news that no one wants to hear.
“I’m still like in that, this is not my life, you know,” Bennett said. “I’ve, I’ve kind of accepted it now, but you just don’t think it’s gonna happen to you. I was only 31.”
The Covenant nurse has stage three breast cancer. She’s undergoing chemotherapy right now and will have a double mastectomy in May.
“I have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old and I’m a nurse and a wife and I’m used to taking care of the patients, so it just… I just thought, oh this is one of my patients that we’re talking about, not me,” Bennett said.
After working in the COVID unit for more than a year, she has another battle on her hands.
“Very nervous, scared, not knowing the outcome. Anxious,” said Adam Bennett, Felicia’s husband. “Like I said, just not knowing was the biggest fear for me honestly.”
Bennett says her husband Adam’s positivity has been a light throughout the process.
“She is the strongest woman I have ever met in my life,” Adam said. “She’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met in my life, also. Like I said, she’s just an amazing woman and I know she’ll get through this.”
Bennett had to stop working and put a pause on grad school.
Even though she doesn’t like having to accept the money, there’s a GoFundMe helping her family with the bills.
“I’m 100 percent the type of person who’s looking 20 steps ahead of me, so I can’t do that anymore, I just have to take it day by day,” Bennett said. “So I’m getting out of bed and I’m doing what I have to do that day. I’m not trying to plan my life like I once was. Today, I have chemo and we’ll see how I feel.”
Even if you’re young like her, Bennett wants everyone to do self-exams and get mammograms. If she hadn’t felt that lump, she’s not sure what would have happened.
