When Rochelle Broder-Singer was told she had breast cancer, she was annoyed. She wasn’t scared or sad — that would come later — but she was aggravated because she knew that all the medical appointments and meetings and driving time before and after cancer surgery were going to take up so much time and energy.
“Everyone reacts differently. Some people are paralyzed with fear,” she says. “I just went into planning mode — what has to happen, what has to come next. Let’s make a list, let’s start checking it off.”
She would eventually experience sadness and fear. But along the way, she learned some things that surprised her, and some things that she thinks can help anyone diagnosed with cancer.
A Miami-based freelance writer and editor, Broder-Singer used to write for FLORIDA TREND. Now she’s writing a series of monthly articles for the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Health System. Posted online at news.umiamihealth.org, they’re about her experiences as a breast cancer survivor.
Her first article is titled “5 Things I Learned About Cancer From My Diagnosis,” and the first thing she learned was to get a second opinion.
“You want to make sure you have the correct diagnosis,” she says. “You want to know what someone else would suggest for treatment.”
Her breast cancer was discovered at an early stage last year when a routine annual mammogram found “something different” than the year before, she recalls. Once a biopsy confirmed it was cancer, she got a second opinion from a surgeon at Sylvester Cancer Center. After the cancer center did its own biopsy, the diagnosis was the same.
Her next tip: Don’t assume you know your treatment path. The surgeons she consulted with surprised her, she writes in her article:
Within 24 hours of diagnosis, I had already decided that I would have a full mastectomy — the only question in my mind was whether it would be one or both breasts. I figured being young made recovery from this major surgery easier now than in 10 or 20 years if I had a recurrence.
Imagine my shock when both surgeons told me that the standard of care for my type and size of cancer was a partial mastectomy — the medical term for a lumpectomy — followed by radiation, with research showing long-term survival rates at least as good with this much less invasive approach.
Broder-Singer’s next lesson learned: Quality research can help your decision-making. As part of her process, she visited websites like Komen.org, the University of Miami’s physicians blog and the National Institutes of Health’s breast cancer research summaries. She found that they were helpfully written in plain, accessible language.
During her treatment, she learned something else: Keep a running list of questions for doctors.
I used an app on my phone, browser, computer and tablet to make a checklist of questions. I just kept adding to it — including questions that family and friends asked me that I couldn’t answer. When I met with each surgeon, I printed a current copy of my checklist and asked the relevant questions. It’s easy to get flustered and forget things, so the checklist is invaluable.
The last thing she learned: Your feelings about your cancer diagnosis likely differ from what other people expect.
She wasn’t scared, at least not at first. She was annoyed. Now, after surgery and 16 sessions of radiation, she’s grateful. She’s thankful that her cancer was caught so early. She’s thankful for her oncologists and her supportive husband and her insurance.
At this point, her wounds are small scars, and she’s on five years of tamoxifen, an estrogen blocker, to minimize the chances of recurrence. Most importantly, her prognosis is good. “Every step on this journey, I have been so fortunate.”