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APEX, N.C. (AP) — Petrina Hamm had been through so much: A diagnosis of breast cancer, although she had no family history of the disease. Six months of chemotherapy. Surgeries to remove her ovaries and her right kidney. A double mastectomy and then reconstructive surgery.
Hamm was grateful to be cancer-free, but she hated looking in the mirror and seeing the scars around her breast implants.
“Having two children and nursed them, I liked my breasts,” said Hamm, 45, of Apex. “I mean, these are much less droopy, but they’re not really mine.”
Hamm wanted to reclaim her body, to put a final stamp on her cancer journey. So she decided to get a tattoo that covers her chest like a lacy bra.
But first, Hamm set out to help other breast cancer survivors “feel more beautiful and confident after everything they’ve been through.” She started Art from Scars, a nonprofit that connects women with tattoo artists and helps cover the cost.
Cancer and its treatments can wreak havoc on a woman’s body, from hair loss to joint pain and forced menopause. But the psychological toll — depression, loss of libido and feeling less feminine — can be just as daunting. Hamm said it can be much like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Hamm, a stay-at-home mom with two biological children and two stepchildren, wasn’t experiencing any symptoms when she was diagnosed in May 2016. She had planned to have a lumpectomy, but doctors found more cancerous tumors, and the disease had spread to her lymph nodes. She opted for a double mastectomy as a precautionary measure.
Doctors also removed Hamm’s right kidney after they found a mass. They later removed her ovaries to prevent the disease from spreading there.
“You ask yourself why, and there’s really no answer,” Hamm said.
During the mastectomy, doctors inserted tissue expanders “that feel like cement basketballs” to prepare Hamm for implants. After reconstructive surgery, doctors took skin off of her hip to create nipples, which she later got tattooed with color to make them look more realistic.
Friends joked that Hamm was getting a free boob job. But she missed her old breasts, which she affectionately called Lucy and Ethel. She calls the new ones “Real Housewives” after the TV show.
Hamm said she was fortunate to have good health insurance, but medical bills piled up. And she realized that many women can’t afford decorative tattoos, which can cost hundreds of dollars.
There are other groups that help connect cancer survivors with tattoo artists, including P!nk, which hosts special events at cities around the country. Hamm wanted Art from Scars to focus on women in North Carolina, but right away she started getting applications from women outside the state.
Hamm got her tattoo at Apex Tattoo Factory. The group’s first recipient, 55-year-old Debbie Phillips of Lexington, said she looked forward to the end result of her tattoo.
“For me, I think it’s going to make me feel a little bit sexier,” Phillips said.
This isn’t the first tattoo Hamm has gotten since her diagnosis. She went to Apex Tattoo Factory in January to get a fish and her wedding date on her wrist, because her husband collects freshwater fish.
She also dyed her hair a few times, once with “mermaid” pastel colors. The chemotherapy turned her once-straight hair curly. For her, it’s about living a “I-do-what-I-want lifestyle.”
Matthew “Jax” Myers, who owns Apex Tattoo Factory, spent hours on a recent Monday evening to draw the intricate design on Hamm’s chest. He also did Phillips’ tattoo, after Hamm told him about her nonprofit.
“I instantly wanted to help,” Myers said. “I wanted to be a part of it. . The scars are a constant reminder of everything they’ve been through. So instead of scars being the reminder, they are going to have awesome art.”
Phillips said she opted for a double mastectomy instead of radiation two years ago for “peace of mind” that her cancer won’t return.
“Even if I didn’t do the tattoo, I would go on living, and I wouldn’t let it bring me down,” she said.
At the same time, she added, “I want to feel pretty.”
To learn more about the nonprofit, or to donate, go to artfromscars.org or search for the group on Facebook.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Before the 2016 elections, Billy Graham’s son went to the evangelist’s mountain home, seeking advice before a 50-state tour to pray with Christian voters.
In his new book, “Through My Father’s Eyes,” Franklin Graham recounts that his father had concerns.
Billy Graham had become known as “America’s Pastor” by advising presidents of both parties, from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Would his son, coming into his own as a more partisan evangelical, be taking sides?
“He was concerned because it was a political year and that, ‘Franklin you don’t want this to be seen as political,’” the son said in an interview. “And that’s why I went out of my way to make sure that this was a prayer rally. ... And I made sure I did not tell anyone how to vote.”
The younger Graham pointedly avoided endorsing candidate Donald Trump, but neither did he abandon him, as other evangelicals did in response to scandals that surfaced during the campaign. He has since become an outspoken Trump ally, and writes in the book that he thanks God the Republican was elected.
As the leader of his father’s namesake association and the Samaritan’s Purse charity, Graham has been more in the spotlight since his father’s death in February at age 99. It’s a sensitive time for American Christians: While some evangelicals support Republicans without question, others struggle to find support in the Bible for what Trump says and does.
Graham acknowledges both conservative Christians and a wider audience in his book, which intersperses his views on religion, culture and Trump with quotes from his father and family anecdotes.
“I started by just looking at the things that I have learned from my father that I thought I could pass on to others, that would help them in their lives,” Graham explained in an interview.
Each chapter starts with a Billy Graham quote, and there are poignant stories about their relationship, from the father’s admonishment against playing with matches, to his advice to a son committing his life to Jesus at 22.
Others are laugh-out-loud funny, such as when Franklin Graham’s mother, Ruth Graham, spotted a “most ridiculous-looking man” walking down a beach wearing loud shorts, black socks and Hush Puppy shoes: “As he drew closer, she gasped. ‘Oh no, it’s my husband!’”
But Graham, now 65, doesn’t hold back his own views. He writes that while Republicans shouldn’t take Christian voters for granted, “The progressives have infiltrated our schools, our government and our nation. Progressivism is nothing more than godless secularism, and it has stormed through the gates of America’s bulwark.”
And in a page-long condemnation of sex and vulgar language on television, he writes: “Freedom of speech has evolved into a massive monster.”
While Graham is ostensibly referring to racy shows and advertisements, the pronouncement is open to multiple interpretations, said Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist Studies at Wake Forest University. “The country, and the Christian community in the U.S., is so divided that there will be some who will read him and think he’s trying to put words in his father’s mouth. But then there will be others who say Franklin is standing in the footsteps of his father.”
Asked how he squares his book’s admonishments against profanity and pornography with his defense of Trump, who has been accused of sexually harassing women and trying to cover up an affair with a porn star, Graham gave a measured answer.
“On this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth: This stuff happened 12 years ago. This isn’t behavior that has taken place since he’s been president. These things happened long before he became president,” he said in the interview. “That doesn’t make it right. And I don’t defend those kinds of relationships he had. But the country knew the kind of person he was back then, and they still made the decision to make him the president of the United States.”
As for his criticism of progressives, he says he’s not trying to align with either party.
“Unfortunately this progressive movement is more prevalent right now in the Democratic Party, but it’s also in the Republican Party. And it’s growing. And this is a very dangerous thing,” he said. “I was a Republican and I went independent — I just got sick of all of them and didn’t want to be beholden to any group.”
Eschewing party labels would likely have pleased the father Graham describes as a humble man who wanted to keep the focus on God.
Some have started working to place a statue of him in the Capitol, while others are petitioning for a Billy Graham holiday.
“My father would have said: ‘This is too much Billy Graham.’ He wouldn’t have liked it,” Graham said. “There was discussion at one time about taking his name off the name of the organization. He didn’t like it being called the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He didn’t want people talking about Billy Graham. And this is one of the things in the book that I want to try to get people to understand: My father wanted his life to be about God.”

My Boy Jack, the horse of which Berwick's Janice LeBlanc is part owner, finished fifth in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. The winner was the favorite, Justify, which went off at 3-1 and became the first Derby winner since the 188s to have gone unraced as a 2-year-old.

Justify ran 1¼ miles in 2:04.20. He paid $7.80, $6 and $4.40.

Good Magic returned $9.20 and $6.60, while Audible was another head back in third and paid $5.80 to show.

Instilled Regard, an 85-1 shot, was fourth, followed by My Boy Jack, Bravazo and Hofburg. Lone Sailor was eighth, followed by Vino Rosso, Solomini, Firenze Fire, Bolt d'Oro, Flameaway, Enticed, Promises Fulfilled, Free Drop Billy, Noble Indy, Combatant and Magnum Moon. Mendelssohn, trying to become the first Europe-based horse to win the Derby, finished last, beaten by 73¼ lengths.

EARLIER STORY

The early Kentucky Derby bettors are putting some serious jack on My Boy Jack.

The 3-year-old, one of the owners of which is Janice LeBlanc of Berwick, was a longshot of anywhere from 30-1 to 15-1 at midweek.

NBC's Derby Day coverage Saturday said My Boy Jack was a favorite of bettors earlier in the day at Louisville's Churchill Downs. The odds on the West Point Thoroughbreds horse dropped to 5-1.

Justify, which has only three starts and ran no races as a 2-year-old, is the consensus favorite at 7-2. The track at Churchill Downs is rated as sloppy.

My Boy Jack has attracted some publicity as a longshot choice. The winner of the Lexington Stakes earlier this year, My Boy Jack has a history of hanging back and finishing fast.