Carol Erickson
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Philadelphia, PA
This issue of the Survivor Spotlight written by Bonnie Squires, PA Breast Cancer Coalition Vice President for Development.
The first thing you notice about CBS3 reporter/meteorologist Carol Erickson, after her blue eyes and blonde naturally curly hair, is her high energy level. She walks fast, she talks fast, she thinks fast, and has a zest for life which is admirable. The weather is always sunny around her.
Carol found a lump in her breast in the summer of 2003, when she was 53. She had once had a baseline mammogram in her 40s, but she had not had one in five years when she found the suspicious lump. For the month while she waited for her appointment for a biopsy, she just decided that it was nothing, and she continued reporting at her Philadelphia television station. Besides, she had been a vegetarian for years, wears a size 4, and does a lot of physical work on her 17-acre spread in Burlington County, taking care of her three dogs, three horses and her 19-year-old grey goose.
She was determined that even if the diagnosis turned out to be breast cancer, she would make the experience look like "a walk in the park".
When her doctor left her his cell phone number on her voice-mail, she knew that the news was negative. "They never give you their cell phone number," she comments. When she was confirmed in her assumption, she went directly to her news director, told her the diagnosis, and said she wanted to document it on camera, every step of the way.
“The only thing you can control is your attitude. So I worked on that area and said I’m going to make it work for me. I never thought of myself as a sick person.” |
The resulting "Carol's Story" was hard-hitting, courageous, and inspirational for many viewers. Carol had a lumpectomy with 7 lymph nodes removed, followed by radiation. While receiving her daily radiation treatments, she would report on the news and weather from the hospital's neighborhood and then dash in to get her treatment.
She wanted her life to remain "normal" for the sake of her teenage daughter, who was a senior in high school at the time. Even though she could not lift the buckets of oats to feed her horses with her usual arm, she simply used the other arm.
"The only thing you can control is your attitude. So I worked on that area and said I'm going to make it work for me. I never thought of myself as a sick person. If you gave me a lie detector test today, I would say I have never been sick."
The series, called "Carol's Story," won an Emmy and a national award.
"It was unbelievable, the outpouring of warmth and support from the viewers," she said, commenting on the thousands of letters she received.
Around the same time as Carol's diagnosis, her ex-husband, with whom she remains very friendly, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She considers herself "lucky" that she had a much less invasive surgery and follow-up treatment than he did, although his treatment seems to have worked as well as hers did. And even when she was undergoing treatment, she took care of her exhusband as well.
Carol takes her professional life seriously. She holds a certificate of approval for her weather forecasts from the National Weather Association, as well as the coveted Seal of Approval from the American Meteorological Society. She calls the AMS seal the "gold standard" of her profession, and she is very proud of it.
She is also pursuing courses in animal psychology, capitalizing on her love of horses and her understanding of all her pets.
She believes the best thing she can do for women is to get on with her life and show them that they can get back to normal.
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