The power and tenacity of the human spirit...

I was getting my hair cut this weekend, and I met a woman I’ll never forget.


I was reading my organic book, and my stylist was asking me about school. Through the course of the conversation, she got brought into things, and here’s what I found out…


She is 28. At 26, she had a full hysterectomy followed by radiation and chemo to fight cancer.


Barely one year later, she underwent a double mastectomy because of cancerous tumors in one breast and precancerous tumors in the other.


She’s just gone through reconstructive surgery on her chest (and had implants put in). She was in the salon getting her hair buzzed, because it’s just not “coming back the way she wants it” after radiation and chemo–and she just wants to start over.


This beautiful young woman has had every part of her femininity stripped away from her in less than 2 years. She’s had a roller coaster of pain and healing and more pain and uncertainty. According to her, her prognosis now actually looks very good, but she has a long road ahead of her.


But her spirit… oh my goodness, her spirit. She was grateful, optimistic, full of hope. She was healing from the inside out. She was bubbly as she talked about her doctors and how they’ve all helped her along the way, and she even joked about her “newfound assets” now that she’s had implants put in.


She was amazing. I’ll never forget her.


Modern medicine saved her life and she knew it. All she could say, over and over, was how grateful she was for her doctors and the technology they used on her behalf. She said she felt like she’d been handed a 2nd chance at life that not everyone gets.


AMAZING. I understand that not everyone’s story is like this woman’s. But it was pretty wonderful to hear firsthand such a powerful testimony of life and healing.


This ‘career’ we are all after? It’s so much more. SO much more. I mean, what an honor and a privilege…


Sorry for the sap–just feeling pretty moved by her today!


Have a great week, guys!



Great motivation for you, Lorien and myself with the MCAT around the corner!


What a fantastic story!

Ditto what Guitardan said! Thanks for sharing, carrieliz.

As a person who used to conduct cancer research full-time, this is a wonderfully rare story!!!


But when I read stories like this, I have mixed feelings about being truly happy. Why? Unfortunately 9 times out of 10, the person this great news applies to doesn’t look like me i.e. she’s rarely a Black woman (And PLEASE tell me I’m wrong just this one time).


Why am I playing the “race card” here? Because all things being equal, health disparities are REAL. And a HUGE part of my motivation for a career as a Physician Scientist is so that one day, I won’t be able to guess the race of the woman with this extraordinary story and spirit!


Thanks for sharing carrieliz and more for the reminder of all the work yet to be done!

She is truly extraordinary–I can only hope to see more and more stories like hers along the way. Seems like all the stories of cancer around me lately have been a far sadder tale. It was refreshing and wonderful to hear the opposite from her.


Path, with regard to her ethnicity, I honestly don’t know for sure–but if I were guessing, I’d say she was a combo/hybrid. She’s too close to call.


You apologize for playing the race card, but if the disparities are there, then they’re there. Can’t ignore that. As individuals, we have to decide whether to acknowledge disparity and move on–business as usual–or to use our unique role in health care to work towards positive change.


I don’t have the answers (oh, how I hate that…) --but I’m not going to argue with you about the disparities. They’re very real.


You’re right about something else, too–this woman’s story is both motivation and reminder that we have much work to do! I celebrate her victory, but look forward to the opportunity to get to work alongside the doctors she was so thankful for!

  • pathdr2b Said:
But when I read stories like this, I have mixed feelings about being truly happy. Why? Unfortunately 9 times out of 10, the person this great news applies to doesn't look like me i.e. she's rarely a Black woman (And PLEASE tell me I'm wrong just this one time).

Why am I playing the "race card" here? Because all things being equal, health disparities are REAL. And a HUGE part of my motivation for a career as a Physician Scientist is so that one day, I won't be able to guess the race of the woman with this extraordinary story and spirit!



The social aspects of medicine remain secondary in much of the main stream education, training, and professional associations of physicians. Yet these disparities of race, income, and education affect more people on a daily basis then anything else. The cascade of effects from disparities of lack of decent education lead to less employment opportunities and less health insurance, if at all. This is one of the reasons I really despise the concept of health insurance being primarily delivered via employment in this country.

The need to say you're playing the race card, like it needs to remain hidden up your sleeve just shows this country can't discuss problems openly or that the blame is placed somehow on an individual's own lack of responsibility. If we cant openly talk about the blatant institutional racism that still affects the the population United States without feeling like the concept itself cant be discussed without issue, how are we ever going to start fixing the problem.

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

I appreciate the comments everyone!


I’ve met the director of the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities and I am also aware of the hell these folks have been through over the past 8 or so years, trying to get this very much needed center organized and funded.


Here’s a link to the website if anyone is interested:


http://crchd.cancer.gov/

Beautiful story.

  • pathdr2b Said:
But when I read stories like this, I have mixed feelings about being truly happy. Why? Unfortunately 9 times out of 10, the person this great news applies to doesn't look like me i.e. she's rarely a Black woman (And PLEASE tell me I'm wrong just this one time).

Why am I playing the "race card" here? Because all things being equal, health disparities are REAL. And a HUGE part of my motivation for a career as a Physician Scientist is so that one day, I won't be able to guess the race of the woman with this extraordinary story and spirit!



pathdr2b,

Clearly we as a society still have a long way to go in eliminating these types of health disparities. From what I just learned in my oncology class re: breast cancer:

"Non-Hispanic white women have the highest rates of breast cancer...[but] women of African...ancestry present at a more advanced stage and have an increased mortality rate. ...decreased access to health care and lower use of mammography may well contribute to these disparities, but biologic differences play an important role. African American ... women ... develop cancers at a younger age...that are likely to be poorly differentiated and ER negative. Mutations in p53 are more common in African American women..."*

So while unacceptable health care disparities are an important part of the problem, they are not entirely to blame; there are biological risk factors beyond anyone's control at work as well.

*Lester SC. The Breast. In: Robins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease. 8th ed. Kumar V, Abbas AK, Fausto N, Aster JC, editors. Philadelphia (PA): Saunders Elsevier; 2010. p. 1076.

carrieliz,


In med school, you will meet many more remarkable survivors like the woman you describe. Some with remarkably inspirational stories and others with very tragic endings. We had a breast cancer survivor patient panel and and ovarian cancer patient survivor panel in my oncology class this month. Their stories are ones I will not soon forget.

I can’t wait… honestly, I hear things like this and I just want to know more and more and more!


So many amazing experiences ahead…for better or worse, I am so ready for the next chapter!

  • TicDocDoh Said:
they are not entirely to blame; there are biological risk factors beyond anyone's control at work as well



Not entirely to blame and beyond anyone's control? Really? I think I'm going to have to call "bull crap" on that for a couple reasons.

But first let me decide if I'm going to respond as: 1) A black woman with a family history of breast cancer who's already had 1 too many biopsies 2) A former cancer fellow at the #1 institute in the world for cancer research 3) A volunteer with the Susan G. Komen foundation or 4) A human being who that feels that a LOT of suffering in cancer is due to people simply not giving a flying (you fill in the blank) about the person with cancer in unless they're rich, famous, both, and/or non-minority.

And be careful with the "biological basis" talk. That kinda thinking gets awfully close to the justification used for the human experiments on tertiary syphillis back in the day, in this little town called Tuskeegee, Alabama.

Yeah, I think Imma pass on Path and go the IM/Hem/Onc route instead!

PS- If you had said gene/ENVIRONMENT interaction, NOW you're making sense to me.

pathdr2b,


I’m not saying it’s right, but like it or not this is what is being taught to medical students nowadays - right, wrong or indifferent.


…and you should totally go the hem/onc route, speaking as someone who was also a former cancer geneticist at that same #1 institute in the world for cancer research (right next door to the NLM in Bldg. 41, Laboratory of Population Genetics).

  • pathdr2b Said:
...A human being who that feels that a LOT of suffering in cancer is due to people simply not giving a flying (you fill in the blank) about the person with cancer in unless they're rich, famous, both, and/or non-minority.



I agree with you.

  • pathdr2b Said:
And be careful with the "biological basis" talk. That kinda thinking gets awfully close to the justification used for the human experiments on tertiary syphillis back in the day, in this little town called Tuskeegee, Alabama.



I agree with you that we as a society, and our government in particular, has really dropped the ball re: unequal access to health care, especially in certain minority groups. This undoubtedly leads to higher mortality/morbidity across the board for many diseases for minority groups in general and African Americans in particular. I agree with you that this is not acceptable for a supposedly free and just society.

I think a comparison to the Tuskeegee syphillis experiments is inaccurate, however. The Tuskeegee experiments were part of a government conspiracy in which African American men were deliberately infected with a disabling/deadly disease by agents of the US government (US Public Health Service), then deliberately allowed to go untreated by that very same government.

While we as a people certainly need to do more to address and eliminate the health disparities that lead to higher all-cause mortality/morbidity across the board for minorities, I don't believe that the higher burden of breast or any other cancer in African Americans is due to a conspiracy by the US government to deliberately give African Americans cancer (a disabling/deadly disease in its own right) and to subsequently withhold treatment a la Tuskeegee. Though to be fair I could see where the failure of our health care system in disproportionately undertreating and underdiagnosing an entire segment of the US population based on race could certainly lead one to that conclusion.

oops…Clicked on this thread and saw it went horribly awry…

  • BaileyPup Said:
oops.....Clicked on this thread and saw it went horribly awry......



Yes, but "horribly awry" is a VERY good way!

These are conversations that are LONG overdue IMHO.

And what better way to keep a thread going than by getting a little off topic.