Friday at the Prescott Middle School cafeteria the Breast Cancer Awareness Month Prescott Police Department Luncheon took place as speakers shared their experiences and their recovery strategies, both physical and spiritual. 

Prescott Mayor Terry Oliver opened the proceedings with a remembrance of a loved one who was able to turn a prognosis of passing away in one or two months to nearly ten more months of survival. Then City Council Member Satarra Williams gave the opening prayer, in which she praised God for the strength that saw several attendees through survival of their diagnoses. 

Then, as Police Chief Ann Jordan announced, a luncheon was then served of ham, tuna and chicken salad sandwiches with potato chips and cheese-and-crackers with pink punch, pink being the color associated with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Several attendees were wearing their pink t-shirts with various decorations supporting cancer patients and associated causes. 

The guest speaker was Kimberly Newton, a pharmacy technician from Hope, Arkansas who described finding a lump during a self-examination in October of 2018, just a couple months after mammogram results had said she had no tumors. A biopsy then confirmed the diagnosis of cancer.  Newton, whose last name then was Smith, described where she was when she received the phone call from her doctor’s office. 

“My phone rang and it was the doctor. I dreaded it. I answered it, and she said, ‘Well, Miss Smith, I didn't want to wait till Friday. I can't sit on this.’ And I knew then when she said it, it's probably cancer. So she said it came back positive, 'You do have breast cancer.' I don't remember anything else she said. She told me what doctor she was going to send me to. I didn't remember anything from the Walmart parking lot to where we clock in. I walked for the longest. It just seemed like it wasn't going to end. And I cried the whole way as I'm texting my family group, my mom and my sisters, letting them know what the doctor said.” 

Her supervisor at Walmart Pharmacy, observing her distress, told Newton to call a friend they both knew, who had herself survived cancer, named Carrie Gordon. Gordon, a Prescott resident, helped Newton learn which doctor she had been referred to at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock. As it turned out, it was the same doctor who had steered Gordon through her own bout six years before. Newton reflected that when she was helping Gordon through this time, she now realized it was preparing her for the journey she herself would undertake. 

Newton was given a choice of whether to have a lumpectomy, which would entail more rounds of radiation or a double mastectomy, which would entail fewer.  “I said, ‘No, just take them both. I'm almost 45. Take them. I don't need them … I don't want it to come back in the other breast. So we did that. And he said, ‘I'm going to send you to CARTI [Cancer Center in Little Rock] and your doctor will be Doctor [Rhonda] Gentry. I said, ‘Okay.’ So when I talked to Carrie, she said, ‘Which oncologist did you get?’ And I said, ‘Well, I'm going to CARTI.’  I said,  ‘Doctor Gentry.’ She said, ‘It's my doctor.’ I said, ‘Okay, God, I see you working.’” 

During six rounds of “harsh chemo,” Newton said her worst times were the wee hours of the morning when she would become nauseated. “The next day, I would tell my mom and them,  ‘I got sick last night.’  They said, ‘Why you didn't call us?’ I said, “Who going to let you in?’” She was referring to the fact that at night she locked the house up and, because of her condition and because her son Damian was asleep, she could not have answered the door. 

“If you're going through, all I ask is ‘Seek God.’ That's your helpmate. That's your helper. He will see about you. He hears your prayers. He will take care of you. I'm a living witness five years in,” Newton said. 

She then announced that on Saturday, starting at 9:00 a.m., the organization Newton has founded, Surviving With All God’s Grace, will be holding a Breast Cancer Awareness Walk on the track on the Hope campus of University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana. Newton said she founded the group because of the need for a cancer support group in Hope. At Hempstead Hall, a Health Expo will also take place where attendees can get their flu shots and learn essential health information.  A pink pancake breakfast will take place in Hempstead Hall at 10:15 a.m. 

Emphasizing the importance of early detection and treatment, Newton told of making sure a near-relative in he early 20s who was told to wait until December for an appointment got her testing done instead this past November. Fortunately, the tests showed the relative did not have cancer. “If you have daughters, nieces, grandchildren, if breast cancer runs in your family, have them to start getting screened at the age of 18,” Newton advised. 

Next, with what were billed in the program as “Words of Encouragement,” cancer survivor and retired Prescott teacher Patricia Roberts spoke, announcing that in a few weeks she will be a 20-year survivor. She told of learning her daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago. 

“In her testimony, she'll tell you, I gave her about a half a day to get herself together, because we had to fight. And that's what you're going to do. You gotta fight,” Roberts said. 

She took inspiration from the story in John chapter five of the paralyzed man at Bethesda who had to express willingness to be healed before Christ would do so. “He kept trying. So that's why I say if you want to get well, you keep on trying. You won't give up. You'll continue to try. You'll continue to try,” Roberts said. 

Prescott Police Chief Ann Jordan, in the midst of her own fight against cancer, was next to speak, joking at first that because of the day and her outfit, she was tickled pink. “I'm just thankful because I can truly say this is done. This is done. My plan, because I'm saying but I know God has it? He's taking care of it. Tomorrow we travel again back to CARTI, having those scans done. I just thank you guys for coming here. That means so much to me.” She said she had benefited from Roberts’ counsel, too. 

After the luncheon, Jordan said, “I am pushing through. I refuse to give up. I still have a long ways to go, but I'm determined and I know I got this thing beat. Regardless of how I feel, I got it beat.” 

The closing prayer of the luncheon was said by Satarra Williams in gratitude for the protection afforded to cancer patients.