PEOPLE OF INTEREST
“At the same time, my mother was living with cancer, and
also my sister was living with cancer,” she says. “We were all
diagnosed at the same time.”
Reading opted to have chemotherapy.
“Going through chemotherapy was probably the most
difficult thing I’ve ever been through, emotionally, physically
and spiritually,” she says. “I had a brand new marriage and a
little boy and I was working full time. It was a difficult time
in my life, and I didn’t respond well to chemotherapies.”
Halfway through her regimen, she decided to stop the
92
LIN READING
Age: 61
Lives in: Vero Beach
Occupation: Co-founder/facilitator
of Friends After Diagnosis
People
Family: Husband, Larry Macke,
and son, Terry Reading
Education: Bachelor of science
in psychology, certified cancer
navigator
Hobbies: Cycling, swimming, walking
What inspires me: Mother Nature
Something most people don’t know about me: “I was born
on April Fools’ Day.”
treatments and had a bilateral mastectomy that included
lymph node removal.
“I made the decision with no regrets,” she says. “It wasn’t
a difficult choice for me. I knew right away that’s what I
wanted to do. I just didn’t have the time to put into worrying
about cancer.”
Although she wasn’t involved in a support group at the
time, she received plenty of encouragement through her connections
at Alverno College.
“A couple of us were going through breast cancer at the
same time,” she says. “It was a very supportive environment.”
Reading’s connection to Vero Beach goes back to the 1970s,
when her parents became snowbirds. Twelve years ago,
Reading and her husband, Larry Macke, moved to Vero. Her
mother, Kathy, had just had a recurrence of breast cancer for
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Stretching exercises help women warm up for rowing. Shown here near the
city’s boat launch are, second from left, Lin Reading, and clockwise, Krista
Kostenko, Leslie Arendt, Karen Meredith, Marsha Kipp and Donna Noel.
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