Hannah Wall, a Prairie City High School student, organized a Dig Pink volleyball game for her senior project after a cancer scare when she was 13 years old. The event raised $3,000 to help purchase a 3D mammography machine for Blue Mountain Hospital.
Hannah Wall, right, with her mother, Heather Wall. When her daughter found a lump in her breast four years ago, Heather said, it was “terrifying.”
Hannah Wall, a Prairie City High School student, organized a Dig Pink volleyball game for her senior project after a cancer scare when she was 13 years old. The event raised $3,000 to help purchase a 3D mammography machine for Blue Mountain Hospital.
Hannah Wall, right, with her mother, Heather Wall. When her daughter found a lump in her breast four years ago, Heather said, it was “terrifying.”
A Prairie City High School student became passionate about fighting breast cancer through early detection after finding a lump on her breast.
While the growth was non-cancerous, Hannah Wall, a senior at Prairie City High School, was still fired up — so much so that she raised $3,000 last fall for the Dig Pink campaign to help fund a new 3D mammography machine at Blue Mountain Hospital for her senior project.
In 2018, after recognizing what turned out to be a benign tumor, Wall — who was 13 at the time — had to have surgery to remove the lump.
The experience left a lasting impression on Hannah and on her mother, Heather, as well.
For her part, Heather said the experience was “terrifying.”
“You have a healthy kid and then all of a sudden she’s like, ‘Mom, I have a lump,’ and it was of a significant enough size that you could see it through the skin,” Heather said.
Both Hannah and Heather remember that day.
The family was carving pumpkins for Halloween. Hannah said she got pumpkin guts all over her shirt, and when she went to change, her mother came up to her and said, “What is that?”
From there, Hannah and Heather said, a month went by where the family did not know what they could be facing.
“It was very nerve-racking,” Hannah said.
She said doctors had to do exams, and as soon as the lump was detected on an ultrasound, they called a specialist in Bend.
During that time, Hannah said, she kept what she was going through between just her and her family.
“I wanted to tell my friends what I was going through, but I knew that it would make me more nervous if I did,” she said.
Hannah added that her family was supportive and did not want to make her any more scared than she already was.
In times of trouble, Heather said, everyone in their family always comes together, and they all told Hannah that, no matter what, everything would be OK. She said her husband, Mike, was the anchor of the family and stressed that everyone not get ahead of themselves.
“He was our rock,” Heather said, “and the more level-headed one.”
Hannah said that her dad provided comic relief to lighten the situation. When she looks back, she said, that was what really helped keep her mind off of it.
There is a one-in-eight chance that a woman in the United States will develop breast cancer, making it the most common cancer for women in this country.
Hannah said that from here on out, should she ever recognize any kind of abnormality, she will have to go in to see a specialist.
“It is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life,” she said. “So knowing that, (my experience) helps me to realize that I know I’m not alone, but also other people in the world or the community are not alone.”
Motivated by her own close call, Hannah, a volleyball player who had always wanted to get involved in her school’s annual Dig Pink game, said the experience confirmed that desire all the more. So last fall, she made it her senior project.
The Dig Pink game is organized by the Side-Out Foundation, a nationwide project that hosts over 9,000 events across the country and helps programs raise money to donate to breast cancer research.
Both Grant Union and Prairie City high schools have organized Dig Pink games for a number of years to increase awareness of breast cancer, and proceeds from the games recently helped purchase a 3D mammography machine for Blue Mountain Hospital.
While Hannah said she always knew that the Dig Pink games were for breast cancer, she said her mind was blown by the amount of time and dedication required to pull off the fundraiser.
That dedication, she said, included help from each of her teammates and Teri Bowden, owner of A Flower Shop N More in John Day, who donated pink balloon decorations and a great deal of her time.
Heather put a fine point on it when she said there would not have been a Dig Pink game without Bowden.
Blue Mountain Hospital District CEO Derek Daly said the Dig Pink games create awareness around breast cancer, which he said is an important topic.
“Obviously,” he said, “we are thrilled and fortunate to benefit from some of the proceeds from those fundraisers.”
Moreover, Daley added, Blue Mountain Hospital is one of a small number of rural hospitals with a 3D mammography machine.
That technology, he said, “has enabled us to provide a big-city type of service in Grant County.”
A mammogram is like an X-ray of the breast. It can detect breast cancer up to two years before the tumor can be felt by a doctor.
3D mammography, or digital breast tomosynthesis, generates a stack of 1 mm slice images (“layers”) of breast tissue.
Instead of viewing the complexities of a patient's breast tissue in one flat image, a radiologist can examine the tissue one layer at a time. As a result, fine details are more clearly visible, no longer hidden by overlapping tissue.
Steven Mitchell is a reporter for the Blue Mountain Eagle. Contact him at steven@bmeagle.com or 541-575-0710.
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