I Am A Survivor!

Entertainer Rhayne Thomas’ inspiring story of defeating breast cancer.

“She must have called the wrong Rhayne Thomas.” That’s what Rhayne Thomas murmured to herself on that fateful day in 2011, when her doctor called to tell her that she had breast cancer.

“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want anyone to get this news that I didn’t want to hear myself,’” she recalled. “I sat there for a second and thought, ‘How am I going to tell my husband?’ I questioned the whole diagnosis, because I never drank alcohol or smoked — and I was diligent about going to see my doctors for checkups. So the news confused me, but I knew early on something was always leading me back to my right breast to have my OBGYN look at it.”

Thomas is a versatile entertainer who travels from her home base in Las Vegas to locations across the country to work as an actress and musician. While visiting her Virginia hometown in 2010, Thomas went to her longtime doctor for a checkup. She asked the doctor to give special attention to her right breast, as always — and the doctor indicated that she didn’t feel anything abnormal, and it might be just a rubbery node. But to ease Thomas’ mind, she ordered an MRI scan for her upon her arrival back to Vegas.

Well, after a tedious process — and being told once again that it was just a rubbery node in her right breast — Thomas requested the MRI scan from the Vegas’ cancer center.

“It wasn’t until I was visiting some friends in Arizona that I received some assistance in getting my MRI film scan back for my personal records,” she said. “I told my friends about my dilemma, and they sent me to their personal family doctor in Arizona who had to subpoena the Vegas’ cancer center for my scans. It was almost a year later, but the Arizona doctor and I received the scans. My intuition was correct, and it was discovered that deep within the tissue — nowhere around the rubbery breast node — was a small white shape in my breast that was cancer.”

Fortunately, the cancer did not spread throughout Thomas’ body or her breast. She had a surgery and the doctors removed the cancer that was described as as the size of beach sand.

“I truly believe that all women need to know their own bodies — and get regular checkups to assure your health care,” said Thomas. “Especially black women, because we are the first to die from breast cancer. We can’t be fearful, and we must go to the doctor.”