In the fall of 2019, when Teresa Basin was 48 years old, she felt a lump in her breast. At first, she didn’t think much of it. She had no family history of cancer. She ate well, exercised regularly, and managed to maintain her ideal weight — and her last mammogram, less than a year before, was clean.
“One morning in October when I was lying in bed doing my monthly breast self-exam, I felt a hard nodule in my right breast,” says Teresa, a busy wife, mom and fourth grade teacher at Rail Ranch Elementary School in Murrieta. “I figured it would go away.”
When the nodule was still there two weeks later, Teresa scheduled a mammogram, which doctors followed with an ultrasound and three biopsies. On the day before winter break, December 19, 2019, Teresa learned she had breast cancer.
Cancer in the Time of COVID
To effectively treat the cancer, Teresa needed a full year of treatment, including chemotherapy, multiple surgeries and targeted therapy. She worried about taking a leave of absence from work and how her husband, Steve, also a teacher, and teenage daughter, Monique, would cope with her treatment.
Then, during her first visit at Kaiser, Teresa received a folder full of community resources — and that’s how she learned about Michelle’s Place. “Michelle’s Place connected me with all sorts of supportive services, including yoga and Reiki,” Teresa says. “When COVID hit in March, all of the in-person services stopped, but I continued receiving support by phone and Zoom.”
As the world navigated the pandemic, Teresa’s tight-knit family hunkered down at home together. While Teresa weathered treatments, both her husband and her daughter were in school online, her husband as a teacher and her daughter as a high school student. “My husband couldn’t accompany me during medical visits because of COVID restrictions, but the three of us were together at home all day, which was a blessing for me during treatment,” Teresa says.
Finding Hope
Once Teresa’s doctor made it clear that her cancer was treatable, she was able to maintain a positive attitude — both for herself and for her family members. “Yes, I would have to go through chemotherapy, and yes, I would lose my hair, and yes, it was going to be hard. But knowing that it would all be okay at the end put my mind at ease,” Teresa says.
In Michelle’s Place, Teresa found a trusted community, a group of women who had gone through cancer, who really understood what it was like to live through such a harrowing experience. “They’re all cancer survivors, so we ‘get’ each other on a different level,” Teresa says. “It’s like a sisterhood.”
But during one of her treatments in Moreno Valley, Teresa discovered not everyone is as lucky. She met a woman who was completely alone. She lived by herself in Hemet and had no friends or family helping her through treatment. “My heart just broke for her,” Teresa says, “and I just felt this pull to do something — to reach out to women who may not have the same sort of support system I had.”
Paying it Forward
On the heels of that chance meeting, Teresa came up with an idea: She could create care packages loaded with items designed specifically for women who are undergoing treatment for cancer.
“When I started chemo, people would tell me l needed different products to better tolerate the side effects of treatment — things like Aveeno skin lotion for dry skin, Biotene mouthwash that wouldn’t aggravate mouth sensitivity, Lifesavers to obliterate the metallic taste in your mouth and Burt’s Bees Vanilla Chapstick,” Teresa says. “It occurred to me that I could create these care packages for patients to help lift their spirits.”
Teresa’s idea took on a life of its’ own. She recruited a friend to hand-embroider bags with the words “Positively Pink-a-licious” and began stuffing them while she was still going through chemotherapy. The care packages were a huge hit with local, low-income residents, so she began coordinating with Michelle’s Place to distribute them even further. Now, “Positively Pinkalicious bags” have a permanent place in Michelle’s Place’s annual budget.
“Every day, I wake up with a grateful heart that I get to work as a teacher, have fun with my family and make the best of this one incredible life,” Teresa says.
