A Franklin man who was once days away from dying is using his third chance at life to spread two important messages.
One is simple: Be an organ donor. Save a life.
The other is harder for people — especially men — to wrap their heads around: Men can get breast cancer.
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He should know. He had it.
Eric Passmore is one of the less than 1 percent of men in the world who have developed breast cancer. But the cancer, which was diagnosed with in 2016, isn’t where his story of survival began. The 62-year-old had to have a liver transplant in 2000, when he was just days away from dying.
“I was very close to not being here. I mean, like, literally within about five days of not being here,” Passmore said.
His need for a new liver didn’t surprise him. He had Hepatitis as a kid, thought he was cured, and then found out he had it again in his late 30s. He waited 15 months for a transplant. He didn’t think he’d make it.
The cancer stunned him, though.
“No one in my family has had it, so it threw me for a loop,” he said.
He noticed a small lump on his chest but didn’t think much of it, he recalled. He used to get cystic acne on his chest when he was younger, so he thought it was probably that. He told his partner, Paula, about it, but she didn’t think it was anything to worry about either. Months later, he told his doctor — a transplant specialist — during a routine check up.
The doctor didn’t like what he saw, Passmore said. He told him to have his family doctor take a look at it and run some tests, which he did. The family doctor ordered a mammogram.
“I said, ‘I’m a guy. You realize that, right?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, just go,’” Passmore said.
Within a week, he was diagnosed with Stage 0 breast cancer. That lump was a tumor that measured about 2 centimeters.
“(The doctor) said, ‘If you have to have cancer’ — which I thought was kind of an odd way to put things — ‘you’ve got the kind you want to have,’” Passmore said.
But it wasn’t the kind he wanted to have. Passmore didn’t want to have any kind of cancer. He had been given a second chance at life and he didn’t want to waste it, he said.
He started treatment immediately and underwent a double mastectomy, which was surgery to remove his right breast. He continued chemotherapy for a year as a precaution, but the cancer was gone. It all happened so fast, he recalled. With his liver, he was sick for two years. But with the cancer, he was never really sick. He just had a lump that didn’t even hurt, he said.
“Everything moved in slow motion. But with this, it was really fast,” he said.
During a two-week period, he went from having a lump to having surgery to starting chemotherapy.
The cancer hasn’t returned, but there’s a chance it might. For now, Passmore has checkups twice a year for the cancer and his liver, and does his part to spread two very different messages.
He speaks to student groups at high schools throughout Central Indiana about organ donation as a volunteer with the Indiana Donor Network. It’s something he’s done ever since his liver transplant. But now, he also throws in a public service announcement for the teenage boys in the audience: If you notice anything unusual about your chest, get it checked out, he tells them.
“Just because you’re a man don’t mean you can’t get breast cancer. You’ve got (breasts). They don’t work the same way as a woman’s. But structurally, they are the same,” he said.
Everything he does is “4 BETH,” as the license plate on his car reads. She’s the 14-year-old whose liver saved his life 18 years ago, and whom he has lived for every day since, he said. Beth’s mom lives in Franklin, but he hasn’t met her. He’d like to someday, although he’s not sure what he’d say to her.
“Everything I do, I do because of her. It’s not because of me. Without her, I wouldn’t be here today,” Passmore said.
“I jokingly tell people that if I can convince one person to do something — to be an organ donor, to get tested, to have a mammogram — then I’ve done some good. One of these days I guess I’ll find out why I’m still here.”
The breast cancer is rare enough in men that all of his doctor’s appointments are at women’s centers. His doctors tell him they’ve treated a couple of men during their careers, but he’s the first man they’ve treated who is also a transplant survivor.
“I tell people that God has a purpose for me,” Passmore said.
A retired machinist, he works at Walmart two days a week, volunteers, spends time with his partner, two adult children and grandchildren, and never tells anyone no.
That’s what got him into his next adventure: walking the runway in a fashion show for breast cancer awareness. He will be the first man to model in the Pink Ribbon Connection’s Stars of Pink Fashion Show on Oct. 13. He’s not sure what to expect, but he’s happy to do it because the event raises money for breast cancer patients, he said.
“I was given a second chance a long time ago. Now I think I’ve been given a third chance,” Passmore said. “I’m not going to squander this opportunity.”
