Carr has surgery for cancer

In early September, volleyball coach Kerry Carr was planning her season, making note of tough opponents like Princeton, exhausting trips to Florida and California and the "Dig Pink" breast cancer awareness event for Penn's home match against Dartmouth on Oct. 24.

That's when the 40-year-old mother of two remembered that she was a couple months overdue for her mammogram and went in for one.

Her doctor was concerned about spots on the X-rays and proceeded to perform a biopsy, after which he called Carr and her husband into his office to deliver the news. She had ductal carcinoma in situ - non-invasive breast cancer localized in the milk ducts, a non-life-threatening form of cancer but one which increases the risks of an invasive cancer in the future.

"I was in shock," she said. "I sat there thinking to myself: 'I'm healthy, I feel 100 percent. They must be talking about someone else - this isn't me.'"

At first, she was scheduled for a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous growths, but a subsequent MRI found more spots in her breast.

"I took that news harder than anything else," she said. "Because I was ready for the lumpectomy, I had my gameplan and for the game to change like that . that was when I just lost it."

Carr was then faced with a decision: Have the lumpectomy, or get a prophylactic mastectomy, in which surgeons would remove the entire breast in order to prevent the cancer from returning or spreading.

While not an easy one to make, the decision for Carr was clear: Remove the whole breast.

"I'm an aggressive coach and that's how I want to treat this cancer - I want to attack it aggressively," she said. "It's just easier to do this. I don't have to take hormonal drugs or get radiation on the other breast for years; my normalcy of life is better."

The surgery, a 10-hour procedure that included both the mastectomy and the reconstructive work, was performed yesterday afternoon and was expected to have gone smoothly. As a result of the recovery, though, Carr will likely miss six to 12 weeks, meaning she will be out for the rest of the season.

Assistant coach Ryan Goodwin will take Carr's place, backed up by Shawna Turbyfill, who joined the Quakers as an assistant this year.

This will mark the longest time Carr has ever been away from the court as a coach, and she said that will be the hardest part.

"You can't go out for an operation like that and be back the next day, and that's where the timing of it really sucks - no coach wants to leave their team for that long in midseason," Carr said. "And the fact that I won't be able to be with the team and have that distraction while I'm recovering and getting post-operative treatment is hard."

In a show of support and solidarity, the entire team has bought breast cancer awareness wristbands, while some of the volleyball seniors are stepping up on the court to help fill the void left by Carr's absence. Senior Stephanie Gwin said she and her co-captain, Kathryn Turner, have shed their quiet, "lead-by-example" skins to be more vocal leaders.

And Carr hasn't minded being vocal and open about her cancer. She has spoken to other media outlets and reached out to Penn volleyball alumni for their own cancer survival stories and encouragement.

"It's like a scouting report of an opponent," she said. "You need to go around thinking and talking about how you're going to beat them. And the more you talk about it, the more convinced you are you'll win."

Although her prognosis is good, Carr is still scared of the unknown, because she will have to wait until two weeks after the surgery to find out whether all the cancer was removed.

"I don't show it around my players or coaches," she said. "I don't show it when I pick up my kids from school or when I sit down for dinner, but when I go to sleep at night and don't have those distractions - yeah, I'm scared."

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