Holding the umbrella

A thunderstorm raged as Erin Dewar finished one of her treatments.

It had come suddenly and brought with it a downpour.

Tired and drained, she just wanted to get home. But she wasn't parked near the building and she knew that going to her car would mean getting soaked.

She'd have to wait out the storm.

But a few minutes later, a woman in a van pulled up next to her and held out an open umbrella.

"Here," she said. "Let me walk you to your car."

Dewar doesn't know who the woman was or why she was there. What she does know is that, for a moment, the stranger made living with cancer a little easier.

"She got soaking wet for me," Dewar said. "And after the day I'd had, her kindness made such a difference.

"I'm not going to say that I'm grateful for having cancer," Dewar said. "I'm not. I hate having cancer. But it has taught me to live with purpose. And I understand now that one of the reasons I'm here is to use my voice on behalf of people battling this disease. I guess, in a way, it's my job to be the one holding the umbrella."

Dewar is a nurse.

She was 30 years old with a toddler daughter and a 5-week-old son when she was diagnosed with breast cancer less than a year ago.

Her husband, who is stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, was deployed to Iraq at the time.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think this could happen to me," she said. "There is no family history and if I walked into a support group, most of the women there would be older than me by 20 or 30 years.

"What I really hope is that somehow my experience will help bring more resources to this area, especially for young mothers who are going through this. You can't tell a 3-month-old not to wake up in the middle of the night because Mommy has chemo the next morning. And how do you explain to a 4-year-old why Mommy's hair is falling out?"

Her hair has always been "long and curly and frizzy," she said.

But not long after she started her cancer treatments, she stopped into a Fantastic Sam's on the spur of the moment and had it cut short, so she'd know what it felt like to have her hair just at her neck.

"It was something I had control over," she said simply.

Dewar has had to quit working since her diagnosis.

"One of the things that I've found frustrating is that there aren't a lot of resources for average, middle-class families who are going through this," she said. "With the economy being what it is, there couldn't have been a worse time for me to not be able to work. We aren't poor enough to qualify for a lot of things, but we aren't rich enough to pay for a lot of things."

Baby formula is one example.

Dewar said she has switched from a nationally known brand of formula to a store brand because it's cheaper by $10 a can.

"As a nurse, I'd like to be able to give my baby a brand that they use in hospitals," she said. "But when you can buy three cans for the price of two, you do what you can."

Dewar has had both radiation and chemotherapy and has six more treatments to go.

Because of her age, she chose to have a double mastectomy to minimize the chance of the cancer spreading or returning once her treatment is finished.

She'll think about reconstructive surgery later, she says, when this battle is behind her.

For a long time, Dewar didn't want to wear the pink-ribbon pin that was given to her in March.

She put it on for the first time about a week ago - after she agreed to tell her story throughout New Bern in recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

"I just want to be a normal, 31-year-old mom," she said. "I knew that once I put that pin on, somebody would ask me about it.

"Now I understand that gives me a chance to raise awareness," she said. "It's my way of holding the umbrella."