PORTLAND, Ore. — Most of us have a personal connection with breast cancer; a family member or a friend has had it or is currently fighting the disease. Or maybe it's you.
Other than skin cancers, it is the most common cancer for women, affecting one in eight in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society .
Doctor Cory Donovan is a breast surgical oncologist with Legacy Health. She knows the challenges patients face and the needs they have, because she's been one. "I was diagnosed in the first few months of my breast cancer fellowship, so I had already chosen to be a breast cancer surgeon," Johnson said.
The surgeon said getting through breast cancer goes beyond the medicine, the surgery or radiation, although those treatments offer life-saving results. There are other things that patients need. "It's also helping their families get through this diagnosis, making sure their job is still there when they're on the back end, making sure their mental health is supported in any way that we can, because this is a real trauma for many patients," Donovan said.
Donovan said healthy lifestyle choices do help lower odds of getting breast cancer by a few percentage points, and it's important to recognize that. But she said it's also important for women with breast cancer not to blame themselves. "What really swings the pendulum from one side to the other are things that we really don't have control over, mistakes that cells make when they copy themselves over from one generation .
