After 13 years in Campus Police at UMMC, Marcus Blanton was ready for a change. Not in careers, mind you – he’s perfectly content as a Campus Police officer – but in attire. He and his colleagues-in-arms lobbied successfully for a makeover, one that Capt. Michael Stamps was able to deliver Oct. 14.

Two women, two different breast cancers, two different journeys to survival.

For Madison resident Monica Massey, the diagnosis came out of the blue. “I had no risk factors. I didn’t smoke and I didn’t drink. I wasn’t overweight.”

Not so for Chicago native and Jackson transplant Johnnie Flournoy, who turns 43 on Halloween. Her two sisters died of breast cancer. “It wasn’t a surprise,” she says matter-of-factly.

Massey, 52, took in stride losing her hair, in great clumps, during chemotherapy. “By the time your hair falls out, you feel so bad it’s not a priority,” she said.

“I didn’t cry when they told me I had breast cancer,” Flournoy said. “But when my hair came out, I cried.”

They’re fiercely loyal patients of Dr. Barbara Craft, a medical oncologist and associate professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “Everybody who is diagnosed has fears, but they are both very strong women who are fighters – and a little hard-headed as well,” Craft said. “But, they have the will to live.”

Here are their stories, in some ways alike, but in others, driven by philosophies unique to their circumstances.