OKEECHOBEE — Darlene Bass is a fighter and describes herself as an overachiever. Unfortunately, her body is overachieving in the wrong direction. She made it through two separate bouts with breast cancer, one in 2009 and the other five years later despite a double mastectomy the first time around. She said the radiation was so bad in 2016 that they had to go back and do another reconstruction in 2017.

She has been in remission since 2016, but in 2023, she got sick and noticed her left breast (reconstructed) was red. Her husband Keith rushed her to Traditions where they ran tests and sent her home on an antibiotic. “For my body, that was like taking an M&M,” she said. A few days later, her temperature was up to 103.7, and her husband rushed her back to the hospital, where she was admitted. “The whole time, my left breast was getting redder and redder, like a volcano. It was even hot to the touch, the whole nine yards.” They called in a plastic surgeon, and he said she needed surgery right away. He removed the left breast implant and found she had a rare staph infection. “We thought everything was hunky-dory, but a couple weeks later, I started gushing pus out of that breast. I mean, they had already... The breast was gone. The implant was gone. Everything was gone. It was just this big incision across my chest again. So, that's where infection came out of that.”

The plastic surgeon said he had done everything he could think of, and it was still getting worse. She ended up going to another surgeon, who scheduled her for surgery the next day, because the infection was so bad. “So, five of my eight surgeries were actually debridement surgeries. I got MRSA one time. I got staph one time. It was just, I couldn't heal, my body would not heal. And the whole time, I'm still trying to get in with my plastic surgeon in Orlando. And because I hadn't seen him in a long time because I had no need, they were considering me like a new patient. So, they would put me on a new patient schedule. And then I'd get rushed into surgery down here and I'd have to reschedule.”

This all started in July 2023, and she finally saw Dr. Lee in March 2024. “He was livid that I had gone eight and a half months with this infection in my body and fighting. I was in surgery the following week with him.” Dr. Lee did an ALT flap.

"What they did is they went in and cut me from my groin to my knee and my left leg. And they took out tissues and vessels and all that good stuff. And they packed it in a hole because it was such a cavity by this time. After five surgeries. So they did that. And it was kind of cool because I don't know how to explain it. When someone has implants, their breast stays cold all the time. Because it's not them," Darlene said.

"And with me, I wasn't like somebody that was trying to make my breast bigger. Where the implants went in behind the muscle and all that. No, all I had was skin, because they had to go in and take everything out. So your breasts were  always cold to the touch. And it's been like that since 2010. So when he done this procedure, it was kind of weird. Because I felt my breasts after they took the bandages off, and it was warm to the touch. And I'm like, what's going on? And they said, well, he connected all those vessels and stuff from your leg to the vessels around the hole.”

Things were going well for a while she said, but in October 2024, her right breast began turning red. She sent photos to Dr. Lee through the portal, and they told her it was cellulitis. The following week, she went in for the eighth surgery. They took that implant out, and she was doing well until April of 2025 when her tumor markers were elevated. They ran all sorts of tests but could not figure out what was happening, until she began to feel something growing to the left of the incision where her left breast used to be.

A week later, she was back in surgery. They did find and remove something, but it was benign. Since then, she has been fine.

“So, I've learned to be in tune with my body all these years. And some things we've been able to catch early because of it, and some things not. It's been a little bit of a journey, but, I mean, I feel good. I’ve always said, look, I win either way. Either he's going to heal me when I walk this earth or I'm going home to be with him. It's a win-win for me.” Darlene and Keith will soon celebrate 37 years of marriage. They have 15 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.