Support the fighters, admire the survivors, honor the taken, and never, ever give up hope.
A little girl, full of energy, bounces around the room. She can’t wait to go to her first grade spring fling dance. It had been awhile since she had been this happy.  Her aunt calms her down, so she can do her hair. She doesn’t have much time left before the little girls father takes her to the dance. The mother looks on wishfully. She was wishing she was the one doing her daughter’s hair. She couldn’t though, because she had just had her chemo therapy treatment and was too sick to fix her daughters hair. This is the second time she’s had breast cancer, and it is worse than it was the first time. “One of the worst times I was sick I was in bed for five days.”
Rebecca Stallings found out she has stage two breast cancer when she was 28 years old. Most women don’t get breast cancer until they are in their late 50’s. The chances of someone around 30 getting breast cancer are one in every 227 women. That is a 0.44% chance of getting it. There is a 15 to 20% chance of getting it a second time. After 10 years of being cancer free she got diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time at the age of 38.
Every Friday Rebecca would go see Dr. Carroll D. Scroggin at NEA Baptist in Jonesboro Arkansas for her chemo therapy treatment. She would be sick for two days, and then she would be back to work on Monday. The first time she was diagnosed she had a nine month old baby girl named Hailey. The second time she had Hailey and her second daughter Hannah, who was in first grade. Her mother, Vicki Bradsher, would watch the girls when she had to go have her chemo therapy.
Rebecca didn’t want to lose her hair. Without it she didn’t think she would look like a normal girl should. She didn’t think that she would feel like herself without her hair. She prayed and prayed that she would at least keep her hair until her daughter Hailey’s first birthday. She got her wish. The day of Hailey’s birthday pieces of her hair started falling out. Later that night she had her husband, Mike, shave off all her hair. She started wearing hats and bandanas to cover her head.
Rebecca works as a preschool teacher at Greene County Tech. When she started wearing hats and bandanas to work her students came up with a surprise for her. They wanted to show her how much they cared. They decided that they were all going to wear hats to school. One by one they entered the classroom all wearing hats. It was the best surprise she ever got.
“I had a peace about it though. I knew that God was going to take care of me.” Even though Rebecca had her off days, she still did everything she could for the Lord. During the second time she had cancer, she was a counselor at a children’s camp. She helped teach the children the verses they had to learn, and the importance of having each other. Even though they weren’t blood or marriage related, the girls were still family. She taught that Southside would always be a home away from home to these girls.
Rebecca always had faith in the Lord during the times she had breast cancer. She never gave up hope that He would get her through it. She said she survived breast cancer twice because of Him. All the praying that she did worked. The Lord has kept her cancer free for the last couple years now. She used to have to see her oncologist every six months, but now that it has been so long she only has to see him once every year.