Breast Cancer and Reconstructive Surgery

It's the 4th month and that means it's time to call your buddy as a reminder to do a self breast exam. It's also time for this month's buddy check report!

When a patient gets a diagnosis of breast cancer, there are a lot of things that need to be decided and often quickly. One of those things is how they want to look after surgery.

For one northern Michigan woman, the answer was clear.

Doctors recommend women start getting annual mammograms at age 40. So at 38, breast cancer hadn't even occurred to Teri Brown.

Breast cancer survivor Teri Brown says "I was moving. We tend to use our chest as a prop when we're going down steps as a prop and I noticed blood."

But when that blood didn't lead back to any cut, Teri knew something was wrong. A mammogram confirmed her fears, but led to more questions.

Brown says, "I was like holy cats! What do I do? Single mom, 3 year old at the time. Just a lot of uncertainty. I was very young, 38 years old."

"I came out to my gardens and I cut everything down. It was my therapy. Ok, it's time to start a new. I saw 2 more doctors and got 3 more opinions and they were all the same."

All of the doctors agreed that Teri should have a double mastectomy. What they couldn't recommend what she should do afterward. But Teri already knew.

Brown says, "it was a definite. Ok, I have to have a mastectomy, how can I have reconstruction? Let's learn about what the choices are and make it happen."

Reconstructive surgery offers patients many choices. The first is whether or not to even have it.

Plastic Surgeon Matthew Smith, M.D. says, "Breast reconstructive surgery is not for every woman, but every woman should know it's an option available for them."

If patients choose reconstruction they then can choose whether or not to use their own tissue and extra skin from the abdominal wall, or to stretch the remaining skin around the breast area and use an implant.

While the options each have some plusses and minuses, doctors want patients to know the goal is the same.

Dr. Smith says, "So they have a realistic expectation about what this is and what it isn't. Unfortunately it's not the reconstruction of a breast per se. It's something that looks as close to their natural breast as possible."

Brown says, "In my mind it was part of being a woman. I wanted to go into the surgery room with breasts and come out with breasts. So it was important to me. The surgery was 14 hours long. I'm going to do it. I need to do it for myself."

Breast cancer and the reconstructive surgery were huge events in Terri Brown's life, but they were actually only her first battle with cancer. Next month in our special buddy check report we'll take a closer look at genetic testing and how that helped her to make some very difficult health choices. That story airs Friday September 4th on 7&4 News at 5.