Fighting Breast Cancer With A Recliner

All around the country this month millions of women and men are united by a fierce commitment to ending  breast cancer. Their rallying color is a soft pastel. But, don’t let the pink fool you…it’s powerful.

Valeda Keys of St. Louis, Missouri is one of the disease’s most visible opponents. Keys is a breast cancer survivor, who has endured seven surgeries. The 42 year-0ld wife and mother is also the founder of Valeda’s Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the disease that struck her mother first.

Years later, Keys received the devastating call of a cancer diagnosis. She says she clung to her faith, anchoring her hope with “I shall live and not die but declare the works of the Lord,” a verse from Psalm 118.  In her determination to live, Keys is an advocate for the lives of other women.

Her organization, Valeda’s Hope, provides recliners for women who have had surgery. “The purpose of the recliner is for a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer and experiences a double mastectomy. It’s so she can sleep,” explains Keys. She remembers the painful days following her surgeries and the difficulty she faced trying to lift her weakened body from a bed.

On the day of a recliner drop off Key’s husband, Larry, can be heard taking deep breaths as he and a friend climb stairs and round corners hoisting the comfortable chair into the room a breast cancer patient requests. He is a quiet man but lovingly supportive of Keys and her effort to ease the burden of those with whom she shares a bond they did not choose.  The two have quickly built a platform for awareness and advocacy that includes an annual conference.

This year’s “Valeda’s Hope Pink and Pearls Luncheon” will be held Saturday, October 25. The wife of Former Major League Baseball superstar, Darryl Strawberry, is the emcee. Tracy Strawberry knows about cancer firsthand…her husband is a prostrate cancer survivor.

Valeda’s Hope also provides gowns and slippers, toiletries, and journals to patients. And, Keys often goes to chemotherapy treatments and to the hospital on the day of surgery. She says without hesitation that “the support of other survivors is very crucial…you need to know you are not alone in this challenge.”

The fight against breast cancer is now a global movement in large part because of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, founded by Nancy Brinker who promised her dying sister, Susan, she would do all she could to end the disease.  was true to her word. And, today the Susan G. Komen Foundation is a nonprofit juggernaut, contributing $2.5 billion since 1980 to breast cancer research, community health outreach, and advocacy in 30 countries.

Growing her nonprofit and extending its reach is part of what fuels Keys. She recently completed a fellowship offered through Washington University’s Community Research Consortium at Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis. Armed now with additional community health outreach training, Keys wants to add a mammography van and a center for recovery called “Valeda’s Hope House.”

It’s been five years since her cancer was discovered, and Keys is more energized than ever. Her story and the millions of others are headlines each October, but Keys is focused on the rest of the year and ultimately the day when no one will need a recliner for recovery.