Breast cancer survivor's optimistic attitude keeps her from feeling like a victim

Tauncy Behringer poses at Riversong Spa & Salon where she serves as manager.
Tauncy Behringer poses at Riversong Spa & Salon where she serves as manager.

An optimistic attitude has kept Tauncy Behringer focused on seeing herself not as a victim but as a survivor of breast cancer.

The manager at Riversong Spa and Salon in Jefferson City, Behringer was diagnosed shortly after her 26th birthday eight years ago. She was pregnant at the time she was diagnosed.

"What (you do) - and what do you not do - made things difficult under those circumstances," Behringer said. "They eventually found I had two types of breast cancer in the one breast - and that meant I had to do treatment for one type, and when I finished with that one I had to do treatment for the other type of cancer."

Behringer ended up losing the baby she was carrying at the time due to the stress on her body.

"I feel that was the way it was supposed to go because having that decision of 'Do I do this treatment? Would it harm or hurt the baby?' was very hard," Behringer said. "It was pretty aggressive, so I didn't have the option of waiting until after the baby could have been born."

Behringer already had a son at home - Daylen, now 13 - and she remembers how, while he didn't know exactly what his mom was going through, he wanted to help her.

"He would say, 'Mom, I can be your doctor,' and he was just very caring," Behringer said.

Behringer ended up having a double mastectomy, reconstruction and two rounds of chemotherapy treatment.

"That was two years of a lot of pain and suffering," Behringer said. "It was a lot of family and friends helping out because I had 13 surgeries total. There were a lot of hiccups. It was a lot of stuff all at once."

After going through all this, Behringer's doctor, Tamara Hopkins, now an oncologist at Jefferson City Medical Group, took Behringer on as a special case.

"I was young and I wanted to have more kids, and she went up and beyond for me so my chances for having children after cancer would be higher," Behringer said.

Sure enough, Behringer was able to have another child - Cataleya, now 4 1/2.

"We had a rough go with her because she had some complications, likely due to the amount of chemotherapy I had," Behringer said. "Her first year, I pretty much ended up living with her at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis. Now, though, she is healthy, happy and a very determined child."

For the past few years, Behringer has participated as a model at the annual Strut Your Style breast cancer survivors fashion show in Jefferson City. She said it's important to show people they need to think about cancer detection and awareness at a young age.

"I hadn't been exposed to cancer or knew that much about breast cancer," Behringer said. "I was the youngest person going through treatments at the time. People would wonder why I was there, being so young, but I would tell them I was there to get chemo, just like them. At my first doctor's appointments, the doctors would initially focus on my mom, thinking she was the one going through the treatment."

Although she hasn't been able to connect with people her age going through cancer treatments, she's been able to help older adults just getting diagnosed.

"I'll tell them about things I did that I wouldn't do again," Behringer said. "Your treatment and what you go through is not necessarily talked about."