WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Alexis Howerin was 21 years old and in her junior year at Wesley College when she was jolted with news that her life was suddenly in jeopardy.
Three months earlier, standing on the field before a Wesley field hockey home game, she had detected a curious lump in her right breast. Howerin even mentioned it to a teammate.
The Caesar Rodney High graduate quickly sought a medical explanation, though some insurance issues initially caused delays. She eventually had a series of biopsies, ultrasounds and a lumpectomy that led to a terrifying verdict.
On Jan. 31, 2020, Howerin was informed she had stage 2 breast cancer.
“Me being 21, breast cancer not running in my family, not having any idea of what’s about to happen next, I looked at my mom and I just started bawling,” Howerin, now 23, said on a recent afternoon.
“I thought my life was over. It was insane. I was like ‘I’m done. My life’s over.’ I was in so much shock. ‘I’m not gonna make it.’ A junior in college, just started my spring semester, had so much going for me. I was like, ‘It’s all falling to pieces now.’ ”
The median age for breast cancer diagnosis in women is 63, according to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman’s risk of breast cancer increases as she ages — from .49 percent (age 30); 1.55 percent (age 40); 2.4 percent (age 50); 3.54 percent (age 60); to 4.09 percent (age 70).
A 20-year-old has just a 1-in-1,732 chance — that’s .06 percent — of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the next 10 years, statistics show.
But Howerin found herself in that miniscule minority with serious decisions to make.
Howerin quickly rid herself of the pity that initially engulfed her and went about the business of devising a winning strategy, said her mother, Becky. When she started a GoFundMe page to help with Alexis’ medical expenses, sister Cassetty wrote “Alexis’s courage assures me that she will be a winner.”
Alexis elected to undergo a double mastectomy, an extremely difficult but preemptive decision based on evidence of cancer cells in other areas.
She then took part in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s cryopreservation program in which a woman’s unfertilized eggs are frozen. That precluded her 20 weeks of chemotherapy, which can undermine a woman’s fertility, followed by radiation treatment.
Two years later, Howerin is healthy and cancer free, though she still must receive regular testing and take medication. She graduated from Wesley last year and is in her first year teaching physical education at Caesar Rodney, where Howerin played field hockey and softball before graduating in 2017. She is an assistant field hockey coach with the Riders.
Now her mission is to remind young women to beware of breast cancer, which, as she learned, doesn’t limit its sinister reach.
Howerin certainly got that message across in October of 2020. Her Pledge 100 Challenge led to players from 44 field hockey teams around the country each running and/or walking 100 miles that month to raise awareness about breast cancer. It was fueled on social media with the #LexStrong hashtag.
Because of her efforts, Howerin is the 2021 recipient of the Delaware Sportswriters & Broadcasters Association Buddy Hurlock Unsung Hero Award. The Hurlock Award honors The News Journal sportswriter who died of a brain tumor at age 40 in 2012. It celebrates someone who has battled adversity while setting an example for others.
Howerin will be recognized during the DSBA’s awards luncheon on Feb. 21, President’s Day, at the Du Pont Country Club, where the 73rd annual John J. Brady Award will go to Delaware’s 2021 Athlete of the Year Award.
Also honored will be recipient of the Herm Reitzes Award for public service, Delmar High field hockey’s 2021 state Team of the Year and the Tubby Raymond Award winner as Delaware 2021 Coach of the Year Nancy Griskowitz from St. Mark’s volleyball.
“If I can share information that will save a life, I’ll talk about it every day if I have to,” Howerin said. “I will speak about this to no end.
“Cancer does not discriminate. It doesn’t care how old you are. It doesn’t care how young you are. It doesn’t care if you have kids. It doesn’t care if you are freshly out of school. That’s a huge thing and you see it more often where young people are diagnosed.”
Wesley put together a four-part video series entitled “The Unthinkable — Alexis Howerin’s Road to Recovery,” that chronicled her experiences.
Receiving that initial diagnosis had been “heart-breaking,” Becky Howerin said.
“But we took a day and we regrouped and she’s like ‘We’re gonna fight this head on.’ She grabbed it by the horns and off we went.”
PLAYING FIELD HOCKEY AGAIN GAVE HOWERIN ‘PEACE’
Tracey Short, who coached Wesley field hockey for 26 seasons before the school closed last year after being purchased by Delaware State University, said Howerin “amazed me every day” with her determination and positive attitude.
“She was trying to be normal,” said Short, who now teaches at Woodbridge High, “and the fight in her is normal, whether she’s on the field or in a classroom. She’s working to be the best that she can be.
“So when this came up and they diagnosed her, she’s like, ‘All right, I’m gonna use everything that I’ve been doing all my life and I’m gonna fight.’ She was so strong and it was so motivating to so many people.”
Howerin had her bilateral mastectomy on March 18, 2020. That was the week the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States and led to the shutdowns of schools and businesses.
“I was the only one in the waiting room,” Becky Howerin said. “There was nobody else.”
“I went home that same night,” Alexis said, referring to her surgery at Bayhealth Hospital’s Kent campus in Dover, where she lives. “They pushed me with every med possible to get my pain tolerance under control. I was puking my guts out.”
At home, her mother was her caregiver. While recovering, Howerin made the decision to delay chemotherapy until she could take part in the Penn Fertility Care’s egg retrieval and preservation process.
“I want nothing more than to be a mother one day,” she said. “Many women who have breast cancer already have children or have elected not to. Those (eggs) are in storage and, hopefully, if I have to go that route, they will help me be successful in becoming a mother.”
In April of 2020, Howerin began her chemotherapy with four bi-weekly transfusions of doxorubicin, which cancer patients have come to call “the red devil” because of its color and unpleasant side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, which Howerin experienced. Next was a 12-week chemotherapy round with the medication taxol, when Howerin lost her hair and “would sleep for days,” she said.
Because of the pandemic, Howerin’s recovery had to often be a solo voyage, except when she was at home with her mother and father, John. But during hospital visits for treatment, Becky sat outside and stayed with Alexis on Facetime.
Throughout spring and summer, Howerin was able to continue doing her schoolwork virtually and stay on pace to graduate in 2021. That July, Howerin felt well enough to join her Wesley teammates for some field hockey games at the DE Turf Sports Complex near Frederica.
“It gave me peace,” she said. “I found so much peace being out on that field. My team and my coach and the people around me, just in support, kept me going.
“It’s hard because when you go through this, how do you find the good within? Each day is something bad. And as soon as your mentality falters, that’s when people fall into a slump they can’t get out of and it’s just a constant cycle, and I didn’t want to fall into that because I have so much life and so many dreams to live out. Being out on the field, I was like ‘I can do this.’ ”
Further affirmation came in the fall of 2020, when Howerin did her student teaching at Sunnyside Elementary School in Smyrna. That November, she endured 23 days of radiation treatment, going to the hospital each morning before school started. At the end of each day, “I was spent,” she said.
By that time, her 100-mile challenge had resonated with young women well beyond the Dover area and Wesley’s conference, the Atlantic East, in which field hockey teams quickly joined the effort.
That’s because Howerin’s plight gave others “a purpose,” Short said.
“When it hits home,” the former coach said, “everybody in their heart needs to be helpful, they want to be helpful. My team was so close and did so many things together, when Lex made the announcement (that she had cancer) the whole team was upset.”
When so many athletes and teams joined the 100-mile challenge, Short added, “It was very touching and very helpful for Lex that she could see what she was talking about was connecting with so many people that she will never even know.”
Wesley’s 2020 fall season was canceled due to COVID-19, like many collegiate athletic schedules were. But the Wolverines did play an abbreviated schedule in the spring of 2021, and Howerin was back on the field, stick in her hand and a tremendous sense of relief and satisfaction in her heart.
“It was like a reward,” she said. “I made it through and this is what I get for it. I was honored to be able to play.”
She still has wishes, mainly that she’ll continue to remain free of cancer and other young women will be able to avoid the travails she has endured.
Howerin didn’t fall under any of the typical cancer risk categories of age, genetics or lifestyle, leaving only environment, though she can distinguish no discernable factors there either.
That’s why she’s adamant that more research be done, especially on how someone as young as her can be afflicted.,
“I don’t want what I went through to define me,” she said. “I’m past that. I’m living my dreams right now and that’s really all that matters.”