TAMPA, Fla. — Eve Matheson is a busy woman, and Feb. 1 was shaping up to be busier than usual.
On top of all her professional and family commitments, she had her annual mammogram appointment scheduled that day. But it would be an efficient stop – not only did she get the first appointment of the day, Matheson’s own daughter was the radiologist on duty at the breast center.
It also was a busy day for her daughter, Dr. Tracy Halme, director of women’s imaging at the Breast Center at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital and a radiologist at SDI Diagnostic Imaging. She had mammograms to read, biopsies to perform and reports to dictate. She knew she’d get her mother’s mammography films early, study them and be able to deliver the annual clean bill of health.
Then Halme got the films.
Immediately, she saw an area of breast tissue that appeared to be pulling away from the rest.
“That was the worst moment,” she says. “I knew it was cancer.”
Matheson, born in Ireland and raised in England, worked as a newspaper reporter and editor in London before coming to the United States at age 26 to marry a young Canadian physician who would complete his training in North Carolina. The couple eventually settled in Tampa with their daughters, Halme and Solveig Ruppel, who is now a dentist in Tampa.
When Halme became interested in modeling as a teen, Matheson decided to write a book on how young girls can avoid the industry’s pitfalls. One book turned into six and today she still writes about modeling for a magazine devoted to beauty pageants.
She later became an aesthetician, a skin-care specialist, and works in her husband Dr. Ian Matheson’s plastic-surgery practice in Tampa, juggling clients, writing and family.
Halme started modeling at age 14 when an agent her mother knew shopped around some of her photos. Every break from high school and college, she jetted off to jobs in New York and Europe.
At 24, Halme traded in her modeling career for medical school at the University of South Florida. Matheson prides herself on her close-knit family, which now includes six grandchildren. She missed her daughter terribly during those demanding years of medical training. “But I’m so glad now that she worked as hard as she did,” she says.
An MRI and three biopsies confirmed that Matheson had two malignant tumors in one breast, invasive ductal carcinoma. The most common form of breast cancer, it starts in the lining of milk ducts, and goes on to invade surrounding tissue.
Halme drove to her mother’s Tampa home to deliver the news.
“I’m glad it was me,” Halme says. “I knew how to tell her, and because of my medical background was able to answer all her questions.”
Matheson remembers feeling shock and disbelief, but not panic or fear. “I know the statistics,” she says, “but you never think you’re going to be the one.”
She briefly wondered, “Am I the same person?” Then her usual confidence rallied.
“I thought, ’This is silly,’ “ she says. “’Of course, I’m still the same person.’ “
The next few weeks were filled with a grueling series of tests, more biopsies and doctor’s appointments.
Halme knew she had to assume a new role – that of daughter-caregiver – and put her mother in the hands of other cancer specialists. But she went to all the appointments, and asked every question her training had prepared her for so she could help her mother and family understand the cancer.
Matheson decided to have a double mastectomy. With no lymph-node involvement, she would not require radiation or chemotherapy.