Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 05:00 PM

Union Grove woman credits divine intervention for finding her breast cancer

Missed mammogram turns out to be perfect timing

Martha “Marti” Jester was the poster child for Breast Cancer Awareness month. She faithfully scheduled her mammogram every year when October rolled around. Always. Until last year.

In 2019, Jester let October slip past. Then November was gone. She really had no good reason for waiting until December to get her mammogram but she finally went just before the year ended.

She got a call from her physician on the Saturday following the procedure. Dr. Lance Justice told her a spot had shown up on her scan. Fortunately, it was tiny. It was so small, in fact, it was considered Stage Zero, which is pre-cancerous.

That’s when Jester knew exactly why she had waited until December. It was divine inspiration. It was God intervening on her behalf. If she had gotten a mammogram two months earlier in October, the cancer may have been so tiny that it could have gone undetected. If that had happened, then it would have had a full year to grow before her next mammogram.

“It was so small I couldn’t have felt it,” she said. “It’s incredible. It was God all the way.”

After she got the news, Jester underwent a biopsy then had a lumpectomy followed by 16 radiation treatments at the Marshall Cancer Care Center. Being a patient there turned out to be just the opposite of what someone would expect, according to Jester. She didn’t dread her appointments at all.

“The people at the Cancer Center are incredible,” said the Union Grove woman. “Everybody there was wonderful. I looked forward to going.”

Jester and her husband Arnold live in Union Grove. They have three grown children. She works for Reed Contracting and in her spare time likes to do photography and sell her crafts at shows.

After this experience, Jester knows better than to neglect her annual mammogram. From now on, she plans to make it part of the Christmas season.

“I’ve already scheduled my mammogram for December,” she said with a laugh.