Barb Jensen: ‘Fix it and move on’

What began as a routine mammogram for Williston’s Barb Jensen of became her battle with breast cancer.

Jensen had the mammogram in 2006 and the results came back with irregularities. A biopsy was done, and even before the results came back, Jensen had a feeling she had cancer.

“I had a mental intuition that it was (cancer),” she said.

When it turned out she was right, “I was pretty calm; I wasn’t surprised,” Jensen said of the diagnosis in December 2006.

Her son, Shane was a senior in high school when she was diagnosed, and it frightened him. He asked his mother what they were going to do.

“I said, ‘Fix it and move on.’ He said, ‘Mom, you don’t know you can fix that.’ I said, ‘I know, you’re right. We never know on a given day what we’re gonna be dealt,’” Jensen said.

She began her treatments with a mastectomy in January 2007. A month later she started chemotherapy because one of her lymph nodes was also positive for cancer. She had two sessions of chemotherapy for a total of eight treatments.

“During my treatments, I was lucky in the fact I didn’t get really ill,” Jensen said.

She did lose her hair, suffer from fatigue, have bloody nose incidents and numbness in the tips of her fingers and toes.

The battle wasn’t quite over after that, however, as in the fall of 2007, Jensen discovered lumps in the incision area and thought they were simply scar tissue. She admits she almost didn’t alert the doctor, but she thought better of that idea.Two lumps were scar tissue, but one was reoccurring cancer.

Jensen then began a series of radiation treatments which were particularly