For Riverhead auto dealership,
breast cancer battle is personal

Helping a local organization that helps local people battle breast cancer is a very personal cause for the folks at Apple Honda in Riverhead.

“Members of our staff here have fought this disease and we saw firsthand how the North Fork Breast Health Coalition assisted them,” Apple Honda general manager Bill Fields said Friday at the Route 58 auto dealership, where he presented a $4,000 check to members of the NFBHC board of directors.

Each October,  Apple Honda marks breast cancer awareness month by donating a portion of all sales and service orders to the coalition, which provides grants to North Fork residents coping with the disease, offers free support services such as discussion groups, massage therapy, yoga and reflexology, and works to educate women about the crucial importance of regular screening and early detection. This year the dealership donated $50 for every car sold and $1 for every repair order during October. It also conducted raffles and collected free-will donations from employees and customers, Fields said.

“This hits home,” Fields said.

Standing at his side with members of the NFBHC board Friday was Kim Healy, 53, the dealership’s bookkeeper and a 24-year employee who was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer in 2006.

Ironically, her regular mammogram in September of that year did not detect the cancerous cells in her right breast. The following month, Healy was injured in a car accident. In the aftermath of the accident, she discovered a lump in her breast.

“The doctor said it was probably from the airbag, wait and see,” Healy recalled. Since she’d just had a normal screening test, she didn’t worry about it — at first. But it got bigger. She saw another doctor, who examined her and also thought it wasn’t a tumor.

“She told me it moves, it’s not a problem. Don’t worry. But I insisted on getting it tested,” Healy said.

When the center where she had the biopsy asked her to come in for the results, she was not concerned. “Everyone said it was nothing to worry about, so I wasn’t really worried.” She drove by herself to the center for the meeting.

“That was a mistake,” she said, her eyes filling with tears at the memory of the moment she sat, stunned, as the doctor delivered the dreaded news: She had a malignant tumor in her breast — a very aggressive malignant tumor.

The Mastic woman, then a single mother of a 17-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, was beside herself as she drove to work, walked into the office of longtime coworker and friend, office manager Dawn Vogel, and broke down.

Vogel stood beside her in the Apple showroom Friday and grew emotional as Healy recalled that awful day.

“This poor girl is my savior,” Healy said, hugging her friend. “She got me through everything that followed.

What followed was two surgeries, eight rounds of IV chemotherapy, a month of radiation, followed by a year of treatment with an IV drug called Herceptin.

The side effects of all the drugs — including another drug she’d have injected to boost her white blood cells when their numbers were too depleted by the chemo drugs — were sometimes horrible.

“It would knock me out for two or three days,” Healy said. The port put in her chest to allow for easier IV administration of the drugs was painful. “The area still hurts,” Healy said, touching a spot just above the heart.

And then came the hair loss.

Vogel remembered one morning when her friend came into the office looking upset. “I asked what was wrong and she reached up and pulled out a large clump of hair,” Vogel recalled. She closed her office door and they cried together.

Healy spent $800 on two human-hair wigs, but found she liked wearing head scarves better. “They get very hot,” she said.

But she did wear the wigs sometimes and on Friday laughed as she told a story about an unpleasant encounter at CVS pharmacy, where she’d gone to pick up a prescription for an anti-nausea medication.

“They were giving me a hard time about it. I think the prescription wasn’t due for renewal or something. Finally, I whipped the wig off my head and asked the shocked woman behind the counter, ‘Do I look like I’m kidding?’” She got the prescription filled.

“Kim can find the humor in everything,” Vogel said. “Her positivity and strength is a real inspiration to all of us.”

Healy says the source of her strength and determination was and remains her children. “I had to live. I had two kids to take care of,” Healy said. “I wasn’t going to let this beat me.”

Healy got a $1,000 grant from the North Fork Breast Health Coalition. She was referred to the coalition by a technician in her radiologist’s office.

The support of her friends and coworkers at the Honda dealership helped her through, Healy said.

“Mr. Garsten was so sweet,” Healy said of Irwin Garsten, owner of Apple Honda. “He told me, ‘Whatever you need, don’t worry about it.’ He’s my second father figure.”

Today, Healy is strong, healthy and cancer-free. She celebrated her five-year cancer-free anniversary by getting a tattoo of a pink ribbon and purple dragonfly on her right forearm.

“The dragonfly represents freedom and purple is my favorite color,” Healy said, pulling up the sleeve of her sweater to show off her tatt. “It makes me happy to look at it because it reminds me of all I’ve come through to be here, that it didn’t knock me down.”

Top photo caption:Kim Healy, left, shows off her tattoo of a pink ribbon and purple dragonfly, which she got to celebrate her five-years cancer-free anniversary. With Healy is her longtime coworker and good friend, Dawn Vogel, Apple’s office manager. Photos: Denise Civiletti

Editor’s note:  A previously published version of this story misstated the given name of Dawn Vogel in a photo caption.