How do you connect a healthy lifestyle, diet, and exercise with cancer prevention?
There are a lot of factors as to how cancer happens. I have talked to women who do yoga, who are vegan, who have never smoked and/or never drank a day in their life but they have Stage IV breast cancer. So you do what you can to be as healthy as you can if you know you're high-risk because yes, all those things can factor into that. But sometimes it's just a fluke. Sometimes it's just some strange inflammation in the body. One cell—one cell—goes cuckoo and everything changes. So yes, we should always take care of ourselves because there are many other things that we should be [aware of]: diabetes, obesity, heart disease. There is a myriad of reasons why we should be taking care of ourselves. The mystery of that with talking to women who are the healthiest people on the planet and having it is just like, 'What? I have no family history.' It can happen to anybody, sadly.
What other factors do you think we need to keep on our radar?
I think that the amount of women getting breast cancer has grown so exponentially. It's growing at such a rapid pace and it's getting into women who are much younger because of the environment and what is in our food. It's not the cancer getting stronger; it's that we are being poisoned. We have to really think about where our food is coming from. The hormones being put in the stuff we eat—all of that contributes to cancer. We are a purely organic house. I know it's expensive, but find a way. Find a way to not get those things into your system. That's why we're seeing so many cases, and you can talk to any oncologist and he or she will absolutely agree. That's my PSA for today!
How has your outlook on your cancer, life, and body changed post-diagnosis, since your double mastectomy?
Oh, boy. I remember three weeks after I had my mastectomy—I think I was on 'Oprah' or something—and I was really, really being a cheerleader to myself at that time, you know? I said, 'Hey, I'm going to have the perkiest boobs in the nursing room!' or something to that effect. And then you start to live with those boobs, and it's your reminder every day that this thing happened to you, unfortunately, and it's a part of your body that's changed drastically, and embracing that is difficult sometimes. And my take on it now, years later, is to be more honest with people. It's incredible what's happened in the last six years since I've had it; what they've been able to do surgery-wise. My situation was very different. Things have definitely changed. I've seen [breast implants] on some girls recently where I'm like, 'Those are the best looking boobs I've seen. That's incredible.' So it can be a positive thing, if it has to be. You can get better boobs than you had before, if you so choose. I don't know if that was really your question. About my own body in general, so many things have changed. I had a baby so everything changes after that. I'm over 40. Everything changes after that. I'm getting used to the new me, my new body. The one thing I can say to moms out there is: Beware of the Toddler 10. Beware. Anyone who has a toddler understands, it's called finishing off your kid's plate and then having your own meal. The Toddler 10, we call it in my group of mommies.
Rivals the Freshman 15 for sure.
Exactly.
How has RAW evolved since you first started the organization, now that you have a bit more perspective?
I still believe in the MRI and I know that we are going to expand eventually. We are a foundation based on donation alone. We get these grants here and there which are incredibly helpful. We are non-profit so everything we do comes from people outside giving to us. Every single dollar goes into paying for these MRIs which can be upwards of $2,000 for some of these women. So we are still trying to stay afloat in that sense. I know that with companies like ASICS and some other ventures that are coming up soon, I think we'll be able to expand to really taking a woman through the journey. We want to expand to paying for BRCA gene testing, which is very expensive. That can be $3,000-$5,000 to get genetic testing done. We want to have a support system. We want to have a nutritional site. We want to have a medication site, alternative medicine. We want to really expand upon what we're doing, and that is really the future for what RAW is going to be: a one-stop show for anyone who has to go through this or anyone who knows they're high-risk. We have a niche there.
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Between being educated about getting screened and the financial aspect of it all, which do you think is the bigger obstacle?
Financially, it is difficult. These tests, like I said, an MRI—now some insurance companies do cover that, but most don't. And there are other ways out there that can actually detect it earlier than a mammogram can. With a mammogram—as great as they are, and they do save a lot of lives—if you have very dense breasts, it really can't see if there is something in there. There are other tests, including an MRI, that can really go into the tissue and really see cell formation and hot spots, and that's what you want to see before it becomes a tumor. If you can find it at the DCIS stage, your chances of survival are incredible. That's why we're still kind of holding on to this. That's how passionate I am about this test and what we're doing. So financially, I think it's an issue, certainly. If you get cancer and you have to deal with that, look at the stress you're putting on yourself [in that alone]. Stress is the biggest factor of it all, really.
I'm sure you've encountered so many women with their own personal stories through RAW. What has been the most rewarding aspect of the organization for you?
Seeing those numbers of how many women are applying and how many women we're supporting every year who keep coming back, who keep getting their tests: That's what makes me happy. It's about staying ahead of the game, if you know you're high-risk. Because of the fact that we are so small, we can't give MRIs out to everybody—and not everybody should be getting them. But if you know you're high-risk, if you have it in your family, if, say, you were adopted…. There are certain factors that have a higher risk platform, and that's what we want to [focus on]. When I see that hundreds and hundreds of women are a part of our program, it's wonderful to me. I'm rewarded on the scale of just what has happened and how I can be a support system. [During my cancer,] I had a circle of women who I had never met before who I talked with on the phone almost every day, when I was going through this. My doctors gave me their numbers. To pay it forward, which is what I do now. I get calls every couple of weeks from someone saying, 'Hey, my friend just got diagnosed. Can you please talk to her?' It's not about me, but being able to talk a woman down off a cliff and be able to talk her through the process. It's a really wonderful feeling.
