Tura Jenkins - Portrait of a Cancer Survivor

Cancer Survivors

Tura Jenkins

Tura Jenkins was already emotionally shaken from a family death when she was diagnosed with Stage III endometrial cancer. Treatment was aggressive and included chemotherapy, external and internal radiation treatments, and blood transfusions. Read more

Anne Elbrecht

Anne Elbrecht was on vacation, on her way to Syria, when the gynecologic problems that she had been experiencing worsened. She made a medical pit stop in Istanbul, where doctors diagnosed Fallopian tube cancer. Elbrecht returned home immediately. Read more

Mikel Nalley

Mikel Nalley, a self-employed artist and actor, first found a softball-sized lump under his right arm, which he nicknamed "Charlie." Nalley recalls with amusement that the nurse who first saw his lump at his primary-care clinic said, "that’s impressive!" She sent him to the emergency department at UC Davis Medical Center for diagnosis and treatment. Read more

Parmina Valentine

Pauline Marie considers the H1N1 flu to be a blessing. It hampered the breathing ability of her granddaughter Parmina so much that she needed a chest X-ray. If not for that, the mediastinal embryonal germ cell tumor attached to Parmina’s thymus wouldn’t have been discovered before advancing to Stage IV cancer. Read more

SaEeda Sharon King

Having endured cystic breasts for years, SaEeda King was tired of having them so frequently aspirated – so she stopped going to the doctor. Read more

Jenkins admits she mentally broke down twice during her year-long treatment. The first time was when she learned she would lose her hair to chemotherapy. The other time was when she had to have a port inserted in her chest.

"The building you come to is more important than you think, and the cancer center is radiant... You need positive, bright things. It can give you hope."

~ Tura Jenkins

"I don’t like having stuff under my skin that isn’t supposed to be there!" she says, able to laugh about it now. Other emotional hurdles came with the loss of another family member, and with early menopause (she’s in her 40s) due to treatment.

But Jenkins became a pro at finding ways to keep her spirits up, such as painting her face green before radiation treatment (her "radioactive zone" look, she calls it). And she found comfort in her aesthetic surroundings.

"The building you come to is more important than you think, and the cancer center is radiant," she says. "You need positive, bright things. It can give you hope."

She also found solace in her health-care team. "I can’t stress enough how wonderful every single individual in the facility is, from top to bottom," she says. "The staff is loving and compassionate, and my doctors – John Dalrymple, Wiley Fowler and Jyoti Mayadev – and all the nurses were fantastic. I really would not have done as well without them. I consider them all family, which may seem kind of weird since you’re only around for a year. But when people save your life, it makes a huge difference."