Declaring War : Hamlin Makes Her Fight With Breast Cancer a Public One in Hope That Others Can Benefit

If golf fans haven’t heard of Shelley Hamlin, that’s only because her battle hasn’t been loud enough. That, like Hamlin’s life in the last year, is about to change.

Hamlin is fighting breast cancer, as are four other women associated with the LPGA tour. Heather Farr’s struggle has been more publicized. The illness of Suzanna Jackson, LPGA director of tournament operations, has a higher profile.

Hamlin, like millions of American women, has been quietly fighting an insidious disease. It took a breast. It threatens her health. It has conspired to keep her off the golf tour. And that, for Hamlin, is unforgivable.

So Hamlin has vowed to fight. The 43-year-old tour veteran has joined with the LPGA’s national charity, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and become a spokeswoman, campaigning for education and early detection of an illness that will strike one in nine

women in this country.

One year after a mastectomy, Hamlin is back on the tour, too, battling par, another, more familiar demon. The Stanford graduate is in the field for the Los Coyotes Country Club LPGA Classic, which began Thursday.

Cancer sneaked up on Hamlin, even though it had announced itself a year earlier. Then, a mammogram revealed a suspicious lump, which was removed from Hamlin’s breast, examined and pronounced benign.

A year later, in July of 1991, another mammogram showed a larger growth. This time the lump was viewed as a nuisance by Hamlin, who told her doctor that she was just starting to hit the ball well and didn’t have time for a biopsy. Could he do one of those quick in-office exams in which they test the lump by pulling out cells with a needle?

Her doctor agreed, noting that such a test carries a 90% accuracy rate, but again recommended the biopsy. Hamlin had the needle procedure one morning, then eight hours later got a call at her parents’ home from the doctor, reporting that no cancer was detected.

Hamlin scarcely had time to form a smug I-told-you-so smile before family and friends urged her to eliminate the 10% margin for doubt and have another biopsy, anyway.

“Nagging was closer to the truth,” she said.

Hamlin gave in, but clung to her optimism, arranging a flight to visit Jan Ferraris, her personal pro in Phoenix, only hours after the biopsy was scheduled. She jokingly told family and friends that her “tee time” was 7 a.m. She figured she would be in recovery by noon and on the plane in the afternoon.

Cancer canceled her reservation.

Waiting for a call from the airport, Hamlin’s pro grew more anxious as the day waned.

“The longer I waited, the more ominous it became,” Ferraris said.

Hamlin was still in the recovery room when she got the news: You have cancer and we will have to remove your breast.

“I lay there and cried, feeling sorry for myself,” she said. “I thought, ‘Geez, this isn’t what I need right now. I’m already struggling. I wasn’t supposed to have this. I’m not a cancer person. I don’t know anything about cancer. There’s no way this has happened in my life.’ My life has always been, ‘Goody, goody, aren’t you lucky, Shelley?’ This did not compute. I was pitiful.”

Hamlin takes little comfort in the knowledge that her reactions were identical to others’ when stricken with cancer.

“At the moment of discovery of breast cancer, I was definitely knocked off my feet,” she said. “It took a few days for me to discover that there are options and treatments for breast cancer. That there are a lot of things that can come beyond.

“It wasn’t that long before I said, ‘OK, aren’t I lucky? I can have a mastectomy and possibly get rid of this thing.’ ”

Hamlin was with her parents in Fresno, and she had the support of family and friends there. Her father says that, rather than acting as the comforters, he and his wife were comforted by their ill daughter.

“We were all just so shocked by the whole thing. She had never been sick a day in her life,” said Charlie Hamlin, a retired judge. “But Shelley was the strong one, not us. She handled it so well.”

Cancer means decisions. Hamlin elected to undergo modified radical mastectomy--the removal of the entire breast, a portion of the underlying chest muscles and lymph nodes in the armpit. She could have chosen a less invasive lumpectomy, coupled with radiation therapy, but ruled that out because treatment would have been prolonged. Got to get back out on the tour.

On the day of her surgery, July 29, 1991, Hamlin awoke in the recovery room and began crying.

“They leave you by yourself for about an hour so you can break down,” she said. “As I was crying, I was wondering why I was crying. I chose to do this. I’m not in great pain. All I could think of was that my little cells were sad. A part of them had been glopped off and taken away.”

As cancer patients know, but others tend to forget, the operation is not necessarily the end of the disease. Hamlin’s form of breast cancer is often bilateral--that is, it is likely to attack both breasts. So it may be gone, but it can’t be forgotten.

Hamlin’s next decision was what form of postoperative treatment to pursue. Her oncologist suggested a dual approach: a new drug therapy for the next five years and chemotherapy for three months.

“I couldn’t get that excited about chemotherapy,” Hamlin said.

But cancer got the last word. The medication she takes carries the side effect of accelerating the onset of menopause.

“So, I’m having hot flashes now,” she said, sighing.

If her life were a television movie of the week, Hamlin would already have triumphed over tragedy, returned to the tour and dramatically won the LPGA championship. Reality is another matter.

Hamlin returned to the tour in September and was greeted warmly by her fellow pros. The golf course, however, proffered a cool reception.

“I stunk,” Hamlin said.

“Her golf swing was as good as it ever was,” Ferraris said. “But she had such high expectations. I told her, ‘Be kind to yourself.’ ”

Hamlin’s personality had a potentially disappointing dual feature--optimism paired with harsh self-criticism. For a golfer, that is a recipe for failure.

“Many people would say that if you made your career on the golf tour--I’ve been out here 20 years and I’ve only won three tournaments--there has to be something keeping you there,” Hamlin said. “I have to see things in a rosy way. I’m always saying to myself, ‘Oh gosh, I’m going to get my putting going next week. I’m starting to really hit the ball with my driver.’

“At the time I came back to the tour, I was carrying the banner of every woman who had ever had cancer or a mastectomy. I was just going to kill the ball. I went out and shot a 79. That was ghastly.”

It got worse. Hamlin’s play deteriorated and she was banished to professional golf’s Purgatory--qualifying school.

“Having cancer and having to go to qualifying school--they are both right up there in horrors,” she said.

“I had to swallow my pride. Did I question myself? Yes, yes, yes! I said to myself, ‘Shelley, are you fooling yourself? Do you think you can ever really win again? And if you can’t win again, are you just playing to make a little money? What is your deal here?’ ”

Hamlin qualified to keep her tour card by one shot.

After its detour into reality, Hamlin’s life veered unexpectedly into the movie script. She finished in the top 10 in the first tournament of this year and, Hollywood-style, won the Phar-Mor at Inverrary in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in February.

“I was driving home from skiing and I knew Shelley was doing well,” Ferraris said. “Then I heard on the radio that she had won. I nearly had a wreck.”

“Until the last couple of years, this was a subject that no one wanted to talk about,” said Patrick McDonough, executive director of the Dallas-based Komen Foundation.

The foundation has acquired a feisty spokeswoman in Hamlin, who, by her presence back on the tour, has helped raise the consciousness of other players.

“If we were ever ignorant about breast cancer, we aren’t anymore,” tour player Janet Anderson said. “Shelley is not just playing for herself anymore. She’s playing the game to show other women that life goes on and that life can be better.”

The partnership between the Komen Foundation and the LPGA is a new one. According to LPGA Commissioner Charles S. Mechem Jr., programs and plans are yet to be worked out. Mechem, whose mother survived breast cancer, said the charity “has universal appeal among the players. It’s a natural. Our family (LPGA) has been touched by this disease. Shelley is just one example, and we are proud of her.”

For women, the removal of a breast can be fraught with complicated emotions. Hamlin is frank in discussing the image problems that arise after mastectomy.

“It’s depressing to look in the mirror and see this blank,” she said. “It’s a sad scar. It’s a part of me that’s gone.

“The happy part is that I am not just my breast. I’m not just this ‘look.’ I am more than breasts. When you have people who love you and care about you, they don’t just love a breast. They are beyond that.

“I’m extremely thankful that I have my life. When I weigh it, I’m happier with what I’ve got.”

Hamlin, who says she loves to talk about anything, is committed to talking about breast cancer, in part to make up for the years when it was an illness that women were told to keep to themselves.

“From everything I’ve learned about breast cancer, the more that it’s discussed, the more women can learn about detecting it early and therefore live,” Hamlin said. “There is so much to be gained by talking about it.

“I do believe that the best thing I can do right now is represent breast cancer and put it before the public. I’m proud that it turned out well for me. Before this, I thought maybe golf was pretty important. Now, I think life is important.”