By SCOTT BORKGREN
Sports Writer
The morning of Poplar Bluff's Pink Out volleyball game, junior outside hitter Haley Slaughter walked out of her bedroom wearing a bright pink T-shirt.
Her mom, Vicky Slaughter, barely caught a glimpse from the living room and asked, "What shirt is that?"
Vicky had an idea of the shirt she was going to wear to the game but thought she might like to wear a similar shirt if she could.
Haley said she forgot something, turned right back around and disappeared into her room. A moment passed, Vicky forgot about it and didn't think anything of it when Haley returned wearing a jacket over the pink T-shirt, which secretly said "WE ARE TEAM VICKY" and quickly left for school.
That night in the lobby outside the Senior High Gym hosting the volleyball game were various fundraisers. Pink streamers hung over the gym entrance, a trio of spray-painted banners hung from the bleachers and stretched the length of the court, to name a few of the decorations.
Haley hung some of the streamers and helped spray paint the banners, including the one that said: "Vicky will Slaughter cancer."
It was one of the few details of the night the teenager didn't keep secret.
'I'm so bad with secrets," Haley said.
Vicky asked people what the plans for the Pink Out game were and if she could help, but nobody would tell her anything. She figured they were just being polite and didn't want to give her a bunch of work.
Vicky's first clue that something might be going on was when she walked into the Senior High Gym and the entire volleyball team was wearing the same bright pink T-shirt Haley suspiciously covered up.
During a ceremony prior to the varsity game, coach Amanda Lance asked Vicky to stand up and be recognized as someone who was currently battling breast cancer.
Haley, sitting directly in front of Vicky, was spun around and never took her eyes off her mom. Darrell Manuel, on Vicky's right, looked away only to wipe his tears.
Lance asked Vicky to walk over to the microphone and announced the team was donating all the proceeds from Pink Out night to her.
"I didn't know anything other than that they were going to have the silent auction and T-shirt sales. I really just thought it was for UCAN," Vicky said. "I was very emotional. I started crying."
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'SCARY TO THINK ABOUT'
In May, Vicky felt a dimple on her right breast and decided to get it checked out. Just before Memorial Day, she went back to Black River Medical Center for her results. Darrell offered to go with her, but she said no. There wasn't any reason for him to go, it would be fine. The radiologist gave her the test results and said she'd need to get a biopsy.
Vicky asked if the biopsy could still come back negative, and the radiologist said it was unlikely. They showed Vicky how her images had spindles extending from her lump, and benign images typically don't.
"How do you leave here and tell the people who love you that you have cancer," she asked.
Alone, Vicky walked to her car and called Darrell.
"I sat there for 30 minutes in the parking lot of Black River crying," she said. "If I had that to do all over again I would have taken somebody with me. But you just think everything is going to be OK."
They waited a couple days to tell Haley and her sister Kaitlyn, who is sophomore at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo.
Vicky told everyone not to get upset until all the results came back.
The Tuesday after Memorial Day, Vicky went to St. Louis for her biopsy and waited another few excruciating days for those results.
Vicky was in her driveway after heading home from work when the hospital called with the results.
She had Stage 2B breast cancer that had spread to a lymph node.
Again alone, it took her a long time to get out of the car.
"I just thought about our grandma and how she died of breast cancer (in 1985). It was really scary to think about that," Haley said.
Added Kaitlyn, "When you find out, it doesn't seem real because it hasn't started yet if that makes sense."
Vicky reassured her daughters that everything was going to be fine. Treatments were much better than in 1985. The next year was going to stink a little bit, there would be times when she wouldn't feel like doing anything, but everything would be fine. They caught it fairly early, the prognosis was good.
"I know everyone's first thought, especially them, is that I'm going to die," Vicky said.
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'RED DEVIL'
The stress of the unknown started to ease once Vicky's treatment plan was laid out in front of her.
She'd get 20 weeks of chemo, wait five weeks, have a double mastectomy, a few weeks of recovery, 5-7 weeks of radiation, a few more weeks of recovery, and finally reconstructive surgery.
Start to finish, the year-long battle Vicky thought she was in for was more like two years. She told the surgeon she was too busy and didn't have time for all of this.
Darrell took her to that first dose of chemo. The nurses called the drug "the Red Devil" because of its deep red color and terrible side effects.
The drug was Adriamycin, also known as Rubex or the generic name Doxorubicin. They pumped it into her for 30 minutes.
"And you can literally feel it burning your eyes," Vicky said. "You can literally feel it coming into your body."
The reality of it all hit hard when Darrell and Vicky shaved each other's heads.
"I think that is one of the hardest things, just losing your hair and realizing that this is happening," Vicky said.
They gave her the Red Devil for four weeks. If she'd caught the cancer sooner, it might not have been necessary. If she had waited another year to get a mammogram, who knows.
"Those first few weeks were really the hardest for me," Vickey said. "The chemo was so much more powerful."
She'd go to chemo on Friday and basically stay on the couch until Sunday. She slept a lot during those first eight weeks.
Vicky still went to work at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center every day, though she didn't always make it through the entire day.
"She struggled to go to work, but she got up and she went," Darrell said.
Haley and Kaitlyn made smoothie after smoothie. It was often the only thing Vicky felt like eating.
"It was strawberry and banana all the time," Kaitlyn said. "They were good though. So good I ended up getting a Ninja blender in Springfield so I can make them all the time, too."
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'WAIT IT OUT'
Nobody told Vicky beforehand just how tired she would be, or how much she would worry about the people worrying about her.
"Even on days where you say you're fine, they know you're not fine," Vicky said. "And I know it is hard for them. There are days where there is nothing you can do, you just have to wait it out."
Kaitlyn took her to a chemo once before she had to go back to school.
When they got there, Kaitlyn saw a lady throwing up from the sickness from the drugs and was worried the same thing would happen to her mom. She was told it wouldn't, that how you start chemo tends to be how the whole thing will go for you. It ultimately helped Kaitlyn to be able to see the whole process. She talks to her mom every day but wasn't able to make the trip home for the Pink Out game.
"I enjoy it a lot in Springfield, I just miss my mom a lot," Kaitlyn said.
The family has settled enough into the idea of fighting cancer that they are able to make jokes about it.
A couple weeks ago, Vicky rode with another mom to a volleyball away game and offered to buy food. The other mom said no, and the two went back and forth as people do about who was going to buy food.
Finally, Vicky pulled out her trump card. The cancer card.
"I've got cancer. I'm too tired to argue with you," Vicky said.
"Oh my God," the other mom said.
In preparing for the Pink Out game, the volleyball team wanted assistant coach Stephanie Link to sing the national anthem. Coach Lance had mentioned Link could sing, but the team had never actually heard her sing, and she resisted singing the anthem.
Finally, Haley pulled the "my mom has cancer" card and successfully guilt-tripped her coach into singing a powerful rendition.
"It gave me chills," Vicky said of Link's anthem.
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'ONE THING AT A TIME'
There's talk about what the family will do when this is all said and done. Maybe a girls trip, maybe matching tattoos, because Vicky is hardly going through all of this alone.
"You don't realize how it affects you until you are walking in those shoes. It is tougher than what people realize," Darrell said.
There's talk of volunteering for UCAN and Dexter's 18 FORE Life program.
Vicky knows how lucky she is to have the support system of her family and an understanding employer, and she'd like to support those who may not have that. But there is work to do first.
"Right now, all I am thinking about is Nov. 9. Nov. 9 is my last day of chemo. And then the next time I'm thinking Dec. 19 is my surgery," Vicky said. "I have to think of it as one thing at a time."