Surviving Breast Cancer: Attitude Is Everything

Oct. 18, 2006 — -- Eleven years ago, when she was just 27, Geralyn Lucas was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"I thought I was definitely going to die," she said. "I never heard of this happening to anyone my age."

Lucas, who'd recently married Dr. Tyler Lucas, actually found the lumps herself. But since the disease is more common in older women, her diagnosis stunned even her physician husband.

"I remember crying, holding Geralyn in my arms, crying and thinking, we're so young," her husband said.

It was 1995, and Lucas was an enthusiastic new staffer at "20/20," whose job was to come up with story ideas. Within weeks of her diagnosis, she was scheduled for a mastectomy -- the day after her 28th birthday.

That morning she decided to become a warrior, a uniquely feminine one. Her first weapon was some bright red lipstick she wore into the operating room.

"I felt like in that moment I was having my breasts cut off. I knew my hair was gonna fall out," Lucas said. "And it was this way of being hopeful and somehow anticipating being feminine when all these things were gonna fall away."

At that moment, Lucas said, she decided she would never take anything for granted.

"This is my moment, I'm going to become that woman I always wanted to be," Lucas remembered thinking to herself.

Lucas became a woman who faced down her fears with a sassy style. This led her to write her inspiring book, "Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy."

Lucas' spirit captivated breast cancer sufferers around the world and led to a movie, which airs Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. ET on Lifetime. It stars Sarah Chalke from "Scrubs" and singer Patti Labelle, who bring Lucas' brash and sometimes humorous take on cancer to the small screen.

Lucas said that living with risk made her more risqué.

"I started wearing high heels to chemo. I was like, 'OK, these shoes are going places after we're done with this chemo,'" she said. "And my veins just turned totally black from the chemo. And I thought all right, I'm going to show a little leg. So my skirts got shorter with each chemo treatment. And it was like a dare. It was like, 'How do I reinvent myself?' All this is being taken away, but I'm going to take it back, steal it back."