LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Ask Josie Neel how she feels today, and she’ll tell you with a smile: “I’m OK. I’m doing pretty good as of right now,” she said. “Life’s okay.”
It wasn’t always that way for the single mother of two teenagers. Born and raised in Louisville, she started feeling bad back in 2012 — she thought it was stress. Toward December, she felt a small, hard knot in her chest. Her doctors at the Brown Cancer Center, where she worked did an ultrasound, a biopsy and a mammogram.
“It came back and yeah, it was cancer. It was like three days before Christmas. My kids were two and four. It was really, really bad. My momma had a heart attack the day that I got diagnosed. It was really, really bad,” she explained.
In Jan. 2013, Neel underwent a double mastectomy and was in the hospital for about a week. Then in 2016 she started having leg charley horses. Then leg cramps, then reached a point where she couldn’t walk. Doctors diagnosed her with a tumor in her bones. Her breast cancer relapsed.
“So then I had it removed. I’ve got like all metal in my leg, it’s kind of crazy, ya know? But I had to re-learn how to walk,” Neel explained.
Then in 2020, they lost everything when their house burned down.
“That was horrible. But actually the next morning, I had an appointment here with Dr. Riley the very next morning.” Neel said. “So, I came in and I had soot on me. I was covered in dirt. I smelled like fire.”
Neel said her doctors helped connect her with temporary housing, clothes and even gave her family food gift cards.
Dr. Beth Riley has known Neel for years. “She’s an incredible woman. I’ve known her before this diagnosis, through this diagnosis. I know her as a parent. She’s an incredible woman. I think that when you’re faced with something like Metastatic disease, and your own life expectancy, all patients struggle with that. But some patients are able to dig deep and continue on,” said Riley, University of Louisville Health’s Brown Cancer Center deputy director of health affairs.
Riley said mammograms are incredibly important and can detect cancer at an earlier stage. She also says it’s important to remember that people deal with this every day, not just in October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“What I would say is, after you walk the walk, and you raise the money and you help us find new research and new cures, take that friend some dinner. Go with them to their treatment,” Riley explained. “Make their day a little bit easier in October.”
Recently, Neel got to throw out the first pitch at a Louisville Bats baseball game!
“It was awesome! Cancer has given me a lot more than it’s taken, that’s for sure,” Neel said.
Now, she’s looking forward to life giving her so much more.
The National Breast Cancer Foundation’s website says when breast cancer is caught in its earliest, localized stages, the five-year relative survival rate is 99%. The foundation also says advances in early detection and treatment methods have significantly increased breast cancer survival rates in recent years. They add there are over 3.8 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S. right now.