I Treated Breast Cancer for Years as a Doctor. Then I Was Diagnosed

I was a cancer expert long before I was a patient: in control, passionate about my work and invulnerable. Yet all of this would change with one phone call. It was a morning like many before. While discussing a complicated case with a colleague, my cell phone began to vibrate. Seeing the familiar number from the university’s radiology department, I knew it would be a “finding of concern.” With a pang of sadness, I pondered which of my patients I would soon be calling with bad news. The voice on the other end of the line sounded cheerful and upbeat. She told me that they had found five little “irregularities”—likely nothing of concern; I just needed to follow up and do more tests. Feeling distracted, I asked her to repeat which patient she was referring to. There was a pause on the other end, before she said, “This is about your recent mammogram.” I’d missed that she hadn’t begun the conversation with, “Good morning doctor, this is about…”, but instead had called me by my first name. I should have realized then that this call was not about a patient; it was meant for me. Nothing prepared me for that sickening sense of foreboding and the guttural fear that gripped me that day. I was not ready for breast cancer. Unlike for most of my patients, the actual decisions about which treatments to choose and how to find the best medical team were the easy parts. So many times in my role as a breast cancer exp...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Breast Cancer breast cancer diagnosis breast cancer treatment i have breast cancer oncologist oncology TIME Health Breast Cancer what is breast cancer Source Type: news