"I believe our children do try to protect us," she said.
She spent the next year thinking about how to repay the favor.
Mothers and breast cancer was something she knew a lot about. She was fresh out of Howard University, studying for her CPA exam and working in the family accounting firm in 1998 when her mother, Anita, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease.
High-dose chemotherapy, radiation, and an experimental stem-cell transplant followed. Doctors said there was little else to do for the woman but pray. They prayed a lot.
Three years ago marked the 10th anniversary of her mother's diagnosis, and the elder Conner was doing fine - "still here, still bossing us around," Kerri Conner said. Anita and Kerri Conner were serving as cochairs of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the annual May marathon to benefit breast cancer research.
One day that April, while taking a shower, Kerri felt a lump in her left breast. She was nine years younger than her mother had been when diagnosed. Because of her mother's bout, Kerri felt she was high risk and began having mammograms at age 29. She had another the next year, but at 31 became pregnant and so wasn't tested. The next year she was breast-feeding, and doctors told her she was at less risk for that sort of cancer.
Her next mammogram, at 33, revealed three lumps in her left breast. By then, the cancer had already spread to her lymph nodes.
Kerri thought of her own daughter, Madison. How could she make what happened less scary, more helpful?
What she came up with captures it all, the struggle to lift her daughter into the bath or dress her in the morning, the changes in mood and appearance. She turned it into something uplifting for children whose lives have been upended by cancer in the house.
The book is called My Mommy Has Breast Cancer, But She is OK!
