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Beating Cancer With Art, Heart: Bloomfield art teacher has been cancer free for nine years
Even while she battled breast cancer -- and nine years after her recovery -- Debbie Johnson remains an educator at heart.
As she underwent care, she allowed medical students to witness her 2001 surgery.
"Because I was a teacher, I had no problem with that."
Nearly a decade later, she won a grant which provided her students resources to offer handmade painted silk scarves and coffee mugs to cancer survivors at last spring's Greene County Relay for Life.
Beloved by generations of students, the Bloomfield High School art teacher's celebrating 25 years as an educator and nine years cancer-free.
"I got lucky," she said. "The mastectomy got rid of all the cancer."
Bloomfield High School's been her sole assignment as an educator. Since starting work in 1985, Johnson's inspired hundreds of local kids. Some even established a Facebook fan page.
However, during a month she frankly calls "pretty scary. I cried a lot. I think everybody would" in 2001, Johnson had the chance to inspire in an entirely different way, and so she did.
When Johnson's breast cancer was detected in February 2001, she was the first to undergo the then-new transflap surgery at Bloomington Hospital.
She'd known about the lump she detected in her breast for about six months before the annual mammogram.
"I think I was in denial," she said.
Johnson chalked the lump up to nodes caused by caffeine consumption, similar to what her sister suffered.
"I told my doctor it was nothing to worry about," she remembers. "She replied by asking me what authority I based that on, and told me she thought it was something, and that I needed a mammogram that day."
Though she had no family history of cancer, when the tests returned positive, Johnson returned to her school, and was overjoyed by the support shown.
"Everybody was just wonderful."
The positive response she received where hundreds of signed cards and posters, held a fundraiser, and brought food for her, her husband Kevin and her son Sebastain, touched her deeply.
"Staying positive matters so much."
By March 19, 2001, she was considered cancer-free, though she continued to take Arimidex, an anti-estrogen medication, for seven more years.
She consented to have the surgery used to educate, allowing student nurses and doctors to watch the operation, a breast reconstruction which draws muscles from the stomach or back.
"Basically, they keep the breast skin, like a sausage skin, almost, and then they take the muscles from the stomach or back -- I chose the stomach -- stuff them in there and try to hook them up the best that they can with the veins which exist there."
After the surgery, doctors determined an unexpected problem meant additional treatments.
"My circulatory system is really bad, but nobody'd noticed that until the surgery, because I'd been healthy up to that point. So they had to start hunting for good veins and big enough arteries to transfer the fat and muscle."
Those complications spurred 25 additional days of specialized care, where Johnson underwent six days each week spending two-and-a-half hours in a hyperbaric oxygen tank, a clear glass tube.
The tank, which contained pure oxygen, simulated pressures which were two to three times the Earth's natural gravity.
Designed to ensure the veins growth, the volatile nature of the oxygen meant only pure cotton clothing could be worn: Anything else might cause a spark that could immerse her in a ball of fire.
Since the chamber required 15 minutes to decompress, Johnson couldn't be removed immediately, regardless of what happened, lest she suffer a fatal case of "the Bends" as an undersea diver who rises too quickly would.
"I wasn't claustrophobic at all, and there was a nurse sitting right next to me the entire time," Johnson remembers.
"But there was a day where there was a terrible electrical storm, where I was just terrified. I thought about what might happen if lightning hit that thing while I was in it. It'd turn into a ball of fire, or if the power went off, could I even get out?"
She made it through the treatments, and duly inspired, has made it her mission to help promote cancer awareness among her students and the community.
"I swear, everybody had a cancer story, where they had either gotten cancer, or knew someone who had cancer," she said. "It really, truly affects everyone."