Debra: A Survivor’s Story

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and a good time for women to remember to get screened against the disease by getting a mammogram said Kaiser Permanente Senior Vice President Debra Flores.

Kaiser Permanente Senior Vice President Debra Flores

The other 11 months of the year are good times, too, according to Flores. She is a breast cancer survivor herself, a registered nurse, and the area manager for Kaiser in southern Alameda County.

Women should be examining their breasts every month for lumps in addition to getting mammograms once a year, Flores said. Usually, mammograms should start at age 40, but an individual with a family history of breast cancer might need to start them earlier. 

Be sure your doctor knows the age when a mother or grandmother got diagnosed, Flores said. 

“If you find a lump or a mammogram finds one, treatment is much more effective and often much simpler the earlier you find it,” Flores said. Breast cancer caught in its earliest stages has a 10-year survival rate of 98.9 percent, she added.

“Of course, you want the mammogram not to find anything wrong,” she said. “But if something’s wrong, you do want it found as early as possible.”

Most of the time, a mammogram comes back negative for cancer, Flores said.

“It’s true that one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime,” she said. “But the flip side is that seven in eight women will not.”

With early detection, not only is treatment more likely to be effective but less total treatment could be needed.

“A very small tumor will still need to be removed, but it takes a lot less to remove it,” Flores said. “And if the tumor is caught early, you might not need chemotherapy at all, though a short course of radiation treatment may still be called for.”

“While most breast cancer is found in women, men have breast tissue and can develop breast cancer, too. They need to self-examine their breasts monthly, just like women. And they can do it anytime, while we tell women not to do it during their menstrual cycle,” Flores said.

While only about 1 percent of breast cancer diagnoses are in men, football great Jim Brown survived breast cancer, she said.

Flores said she is acutely aware as an African American woman that more white women get breast cancer, but the mortality rate among African American women is 39 percent higher. Health-care disparities are often cited as a reason, she said.

Even if you get a letter after your mammogram telling you no cancer was detected, be sure to read the whole letter, Flores said. Sometimes there will be a note that unusually dense breast tissue was found, and you may need to be retested to get a better image.

Often, relatively new 3-D scanners are then used, which was how her own cancer was found, Flores said. Sometimes, ultrasound is used instead, she said.

Not all survivors like to talk about their experience, Flores said, but she noted this reporter was talking to her on her “rebirthday.” It was the anniversary of the start of her fight against breast cancer.

“I celebrate my recovery. I live my life fully and I live it big,” Flores said.