When I was growing up, I witnessed both my grandmothers go through breast cancer treatment, mastectomies, and the disease’s debilitating effects on their bodies and spirit. Annual mammograms were not recommended for women starting at age 40 and over until last year, when recent data indicated the incidence of breast cancer was—and continues—increasing in younger women. Reconstructive surgery began in the 1970s but was experimental back then, until tissue expanders were introduced in the 1980s. Both my grandmothers forged ahead with grace as I asked lots of questions, squeezing their gel-filled bra inserts curiously in my 8-year-old hands. I was shown the true strength and resilience of a woman. Then my mother got it—twice—and as was the style of her mother, she handled it without fuss, quietly announcing while she was preparing dinner in the kitchen one night that she was going to have a lumpectomy.
Today, breast cancer is the most common cancer globally, with 1 in every 8 women diagnosed in the U.S. alone.
This issue of Purist isn’t just a personal one; it’s an important one, as we highlight three significant women who have given a voice to those quietly, painfully dealing with breast cancer.
While I was old enough to escort my mother to surgery and radiation with my father the first go-round, I didn’t fully grasp the experience until I met her doctor before her second bout with cancer.
At the forefront of breast cancer treatment is Dr. Elisa Port, associate professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital, as well as co-founder and director of the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Health System since 2011. By happenstance, I met Dr. Port at Ditch Plains in Montauk surfing one day. I subsequently read her book, The New Generation Breast Cancer Book: How to Navigate Your Diagnosis and Treatment Options—and Remain Optimistic—in an Age of Information Overload (her second book, The Breast Advice, will be out this winter), and decided to write a profile about her innovations.
A year later, when my mother was diagnosed again 10 years after her first surgery and within six months of a mammogram, I called Dr. Port’s office right away. My mother took some convincing to stray from her scheduled mastectomy with her own doctor, but I knew once she sat down with Dr. Port, she would see a brighter road ahead that didn’t involve removing her entire breast. Thank you, Dr. Port.
Every experience is different and so personal that I wanted to highlight two other stalwart women in this issue, my friends Jill Martin and Stacey Griffith, and their journeys through the harrowing disease to good health. They, too, handled their paths as graceful guides, sharing their step-by-step navigations so those of us on the sidelines could learn and cheer them on.
I watched Jill share her brutal journey through a double mastectomy in person across the street from me (we aren’t just friends, we were neighbors), online and on TV as women all over the world felt comforted in their own struggle with the disease. We also witnessed Stacey’s great aplomb, a big voice in the fitness community as a master SoulCycle teacher and trainer, as her physical and mental strength guided her through the long recovery.
When I feel like whining about one of my assorted illnesses, I take a page out of my lineage playbook and that of Jill’s and Stacey’s to remind myself of the strong women who came before us and the resilient women today, connected by the energy we are carrying deep within us that is ignited by the sharing, the hand-holding and rooting for one another. That is when the true healing begins.
