Transcription of Sharon Leddy-Smart for the show Courage & Resilience #3
Lisa: Joining us in the studio today, along with Genevieve Morgan, the wellness editor from Main Magazine, are Sharon Leddy-Smart and Doctor Melinda Molin. Doctor Molin was born and raised in New York City, and completed advanced fellowship training in surgical critical care at Hartford Hospital and then trauma surgery at the University of California, San Diego. In 1996 Doctor Molin established her own private practice, devoted exclusively to breast surgery and became the director of Mercy Hospitals Breast Health Resource Center. In May of 2006 her practice, Breast Care Specialists of Maine, became a department of Mercy Hospital.
Sharon Leddy-Smart is a woman who lives a full happy life as a wife and mother of five. Working full-time, she manages to train for triathlons and stay connected to good friends. Sharon is also a breast cancer survivor. Diagnosed in July 2009, two days before her twins fourth birthday, and only two weeks before the Tri for a Cure, she didn’t let the daunting news hold her back from participating or celebrating with her family. The following years, Tri for a Cure came quickly, after a year filled with bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and re-constructive surgeries. Physically unprepared for the challenge, she was determined more than ever to cross the finish line, this time as a survivor. She had taught herself, and her children, that even with setbacks we can overcome whatever obstacles life presents to us, we just have to be willing to fight. Good morning to you both.
We’ve been talking about courage, we names this show courage. Gen and I had this conversation about courage, and what courage means. It’s about fearless, but then we came to the understanding that really it’s more about resilience and the ability to bounce back and be elastic. I have the sense that Sharon, you’ve had this in your life as a breast cancer survivor and a mother and a full-time worker and an athlete.
I know that Doctor Molin has done this, based on the fact that she’s had to go through training. In fact, we were having a conversation before we got on the air as to how many hours a week that was being a surgeon in Brooklyn. It’s pretty appropriate that you’re here. I’m interested, let’s start with you Doctor Molin. One in eight women have breast cancer or are diagnosed with breast cancer over the course of their lifetime, did this help influence your choice of career or was there something else that brought you into being the type of surgeon that you are?
Doctor Molin: I actually began my life as a trauma critical care specialist, which is what brought me to Maine. I have fellowship training in trauma surgery and surgical intensive care. When I came here, the chairman of the department said, who actually … this is ancient history in breast cancer in Maine, Carl Bradenburg wife, Patricia Bradenburg, is somebody who was really at the beginning of breast cancer activism and advocacy in Maine. He said, “Why don’t you take a look at taking care of this particular entity as a separate issue, and why don’t you develop a sub-focus on that.” With that suggestion I was the only female surgeon in this part of Maine, not in the state of Maine at the time, but I started to do a lot of work.
Genevieve M.: Lisa, I don’t know if you know this, but obviously Doctor Molin knows this, but I’m a patient of Doctor Molin, as is Sharon, who is here today. I can officially say that one of the wonderful things about your breast care center is that is patient focused. I don’t know if you’ve had that experience as well.
Sharon: Absolutely.
Genevieve M.: I’d love you to speak to that.
Sharon: Absolutely. I had heard many wonderful things about you of course, and I didn’t really know what to expect when I went in. In fact, I made a phone call and I said, “Is there anything I should be aware of? Should I know anything ahead of time? Is there anything that I need to do?” They said, staff said, “No, just come on and fill the paperwork out and Melinda will explain everything to you, Doctor Molin.” When I went in there, and I waited for a very long time in the waiting room, of course really nervous, my husband by my side. I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and to be honest I was thinking, “Okay, all right, what’s taking so long?” When I went into her office, the examining room, I knew exactly why I had waited so long in the waiting room, it’s because she took her time, she was very, very thorough, explained what was happening, what were my options, how did I feel about it, did I understand it.
Then in my exam she thought that she had felt something in my lymph nodes, and said, “I’m going to take you right down to radiology.” Doctor Molin then pocked her head out of the examining room and said to one of the nurses, “I’m going to be in here for awhile.” I thought, “Wow.” Honestly, I’ve shared this story many, many times. It really meant so much, that personal care, sometimes you’re in and out of doctor’s office in a flash. I really appreciated that one-on-one time and attention. When I ended come back from radiology, actually I wasn’t even back from radiology yet, the schedule was a little delayed. She came in looking for me, personally, which I thought was really pretty special. I was on the table at the time, and she actually hopped up right next to me, which I thought was amazing. I thought, “How cool is this? She cares about me, the person, she’s looking for, she’s literally right there by my side.” It really, really meant a lot to me. I thank you.
Lisa: It is, and I know from my patients, when I have people who have come in and they feel a lump, and specifically a lump in their breast, they’re terrified, and time is really of the essence. As soon as you find something, as soon as you see something it really is important to know what that means, what it looks like, whether it’s benign, whether it’s not. I think that Gen, you were telling me about this yesterday, and I know Sharon you were telling me that you were very quickly diagnoses, scheduled for surgery. Weren’t you about ready to go do Tri for a Cure?
Sharon: I was actually. I was diagnosed two weeks before. It was important to me to be able to do it, it had been my second year at the time. I had always been very active with my family, active in sports, and made a conscious effort to take care of myself. I really wanted to be able to participate in that amazing event. Lo and behold, like I said, I was diagnosed with breast cancer so it had a certainly different meaning the second year. I felt fine, and I spoke to Doctor Molin about what I really wanted to be able to do, and she said, “You can do it.” The surgery was scheduled after, and she knew that was important to me on a number, for a number of reasons really.
Lisa: Right, and you told me the story about seeing the survivors the first year, and knowing that you had breast cancer, and then going back again and having it mean an entirely different thing.
Sharon: Well my first year I did not have breast cancer. I didn’t think that I knew anybody who had breast cancer, had never really been anything that I had experienced in my family. I was just amazed by the amount of support, the amount of people it had touched in a small area, and of course it was much bigger and it is much bigger. To look at the survivors and think to myself how far they had come, not really knowing the journey.
My second year, as I mentioned, being diagnosed, I stood not with the survivors, but with the other women in the opening ceremonies. The survivors stood up front in their pink caps and they read their poem and they cried and they hugged each other, and it seemed so distant to me, it really truly did. It was like I was in a tunnel looking down and I just could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was surrounded by my friends, who literally all had their hands on me, and I was sobbing, sobbing because I wanted to be where they were. I wasn’t there and I hadn’t had surgery and I hasn’t started chemotherapy or radiation or any of that, and I really didn’t know what was in store, I just knew that I didn’t want to be where I was and wanted to be over with the survivors.
The third year I was with the survivors, so it was very, very special year for me. It was a challenging year, to say the least, and I was not physically prepared at all. I was one of those people who did not lose weight during chemotherapy but gained weight during chemotherapy. It was difficult to find the time to exercise, to have the energy to exercise with taking care of my family and working full-time during treatments. I tell people I just lived my life, and that’s really what it is. I’m a busy woman, as many of us are and most of us are, and I have a lot of wonderful blessings in my life. Looking back at the situation they were a distraction, a positive distraction. I didn’t sit around and feel sorry for myself, I had to get up the morning, I had to feed my children, make sure they were ready for school, and went about my day; I really, truly did. Don’t get me wrong, the thought of it does enter my mind occasionally , but it doesn’t consume my life.
Genevieve M.: Well, this brings up a good point, because my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, Doctor Molin knows this. Lisa and I were talking yesterday about the moment when you get that diagnosis. I wanted Doctor Molin to talk about some of the things that she does, because she does them so well, to help, we were talking about resilience and courage, and one of the things that doctors and family members of recently diagnosed breast cancer patients can do is have some tools to help them realize that there is life after the diagnoses. It’s a journey, but like any journey, you do, you travel a distant landscape but you can come back. You may be a little different, but you can come back. Would you speak to that Doctor Molin, because you were so helpful to me.
Doctor Molin: I think there are several elements, one is it’s helpful if you can intuit that people are different, they receive information differently, they process information differently. I find that some things are consistent, people need language that they can understand, they want to hear the truth. It’s important to find out what somebody’s support system is, sometimes we’ll have women who come in on their own. I always say, “You’re here by yourself today.” Often times they’ll say, “I’m just somebody who needs to get the facts first and then I’ll bring everybody into the loop.” Then when their day of surgery arrives, you’ve got a cadre of supportive friends or relatives.
I think that’s important to walk the walk however we do it. You, Lisa, work in an area which I couldn’t work in, which is a more global general health. I think that’s an incredible challenge. People talk about holistic, but you shouldn’t have to go to a holistic specialist to get a holistic approach. That was a very exciting thing, and I think that breast cancer, nobody would ask for that growth opportunity, but any trauma, any tragedy in anybody’s life is an opportunity for transformation. If I can be a part of that process, in addition, and I’m not trying to downgrade the nuts and bolts of good technical surgery and excellent decision making and collaboration with your colleagues, that’s all key. If in the process somebody can find an entry way to make some positive change in their lives, and if I can be a part of that, when someone comes back and tells me that, that’ s a very exciting thing for me.
Lisa: Sharon, did that happen for you? Was this a moment that caused you to really find some more meaning, find additional meaning in your already busy and full life?
Sharon: Absolutely. I felt that it was, I was obligated to reach out and help others who were in my situation or had experienced some form. Many people did reach out to me, they knew a friend of a friend would contact me, asking, “Can you refer us to a doctor? Who did you have for a plastic surgeon? What was your experience and how did you deal with your children?” A lot of people did come my way, but I also gave out my phone number a lot to people that I knew. I just went up to people. I reached out to people who had the pink bandanna. I looked at people right in the eyes and said, “Hi.” I felt that just gave people a little bit of hope. When I didn’t have any hair people looked at me, I made eye contact with them, they very quickly looked away. I always looked right back like to say, “it’s okay.” The hair doesn’t make you who you are. People may look at you a little bit differently, but it’s only hair and it grows back.
Doctor Molin: To Sharon’s point, the generosity of women who have been through this experience in terms of sharing it with women who are newly diagnosed is extraordinary. Support groups are wonderful, but I think sometimes that can be very intimidating for somebody who is a new recruit so to speak. What we do in the practice is, with all of our years, we have … we try to match women demographically with someone else who can be a buddy. Every time we’ve called and said, “Would you be available to speak with somebody?” The answer is always yes. I think it’s an incredibly generous thing to do.
Genevieve M.: Well, I have one last question for Doctor Molin, and Sharon you can chime in here, because we are the lay people in the room. I’m, obviously as my role as wellness editor at Maine Magazine, I’m always telling people to take good care of themselves in the way that you’ve been talking about. One of the ways that women can take care of themselves is through yearly mammograms after 40, at least that’s what we’ve all been told. Lately I’ve been hearing from many people that they’re getting call back from their digital mammograms. I know that that’s somewhat controversial right now, but I do one every year, and I’m wondering what you have to say about that just for the general listener out there.
Doctor Molin: We need to find out what causes breast cancer so that we can prevent it. On its best day, a mammogram is not going to pick up the malignant process until it’s had three to five years to percolate. We’re not getting in on ground zero with mammography, with MRI, with any sort of diagnostics that are available. We’re obviously still not at a place, since we don’t know what the cause is, it’s very difficult to prevent. Mammography has a lot of technical imperfections, and what happens with digital mammography, is it does allow you to see a more dense breast in a better way, but what it also is, is it’s so much more sensitive that a lot of small things, which never pan out to be anything, particularly micro-calcifications, most of which are going to be very benign in the breast, are called abnormalities. The callback rate, the biopsy rate, the anxiety rate go up and it’s not necessarily clear that the cure rate goes up.
For purposes of breast cancer, we really can think about there are three types of breast cancer. There’s the type that’s so non-aggressive that when you diagnose it probably doesn’t really matter, in terms of its cure. There’s the type that’s so aggressive that it may not matter how quote on quote, early. People can fuse mammographically early with biologically early, it may not matter, that cancer is so aggressive that all of the tools that we have for cure may not impact. The sad fact is that women still die of breast cancer. Then you’ve got that middle ground where if we find something, we can impact and change the natural history from death to survival. How the diagnostic tools we have factor into all of that is not necessarily clear. I don’t want to send the message of don’t get mammograms, but it’s important for women to know that there’s a lot of controversy and a lot of ambiguity.
Lisa: Well, this has been a very informative segment. It’s been informative on lots of different levels, from the scientific to the emotional, social ramifications of breast cancer. You are a pretty amazing duo over on the other side of the microphone, it’s really great to have you both in here. It’s been nice to spend time with your Doctor Melinda Molin, and also Sharon Leddy-Smart, breast cancer, mother, full-time work, tri-athlete. With Gen Morgan, wellness editor for Maine Magazine, who her herself has a personal story related to this problem. Thank you so much for coming in and we’ll go into the breast cancer awareness month with full force.
Genevieve M.: Lots of courage.
Lisa: Yes, and resilience.