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[Music]
>> Linda Van: I think one of my lowest points was when I found out I was actually going
to have to have a mastectomy and that word was so scary.
I mean it was a word that yea you read and you know you see it in magazines,
but to think this is going to be my journey was really frightening.
[Background Music] When I got the news that it was malignant I mean you run a gamut
of emotions, the fear, the concern, just the you know feeling a little bit
like you just got hit upside the head.
And then you go okay, what's next?
What are we going to do?
I through Providence was with Dr. Momoh and he's just amazing.
The fact that there were multiple options for my breast reconstruction that were explained to me
and those options could all be done by my plastic surgeon
or the plastic surgery team at U of M is wonderful.
They talked to me about options that I had talked to other breast cancer survivors
about that have never been presented to others.
And the one that he talked to me about that I could be a good candidate for was the DIEP flap.
He seemed to really think about it from my perspective.
It wasn't just a clinical decision for him and he's one of the few
at the time who was doing this procedure.
And it sounded really scary and really cool at the same time.
So, you know to think about reconstructing your breast at the time of surgery
and using your own tissue to do it, I was intrigued.
I thought that's definitely the way I want to go.
The scars are kind of a reminder a little bit of what I went through and that's okay,
because I had a really great outcome.
So, I don't mind seeing those scars because they kind of show me that I'm a survivor.
For me one of the hallmarks of the fact that I was able to recover and get to my new normal was
when I could finally start running again.
It's a sign to me that there's some things that continue on regardless of cancer.
And it's somewhat of a metaphor if you will for the whole cancer journey,
because when you're running there's times where you just want to quit.
I don't want to do this, this is no fun.
I'm sweating.
I don't feel good.
My body doesn't feel good, but then you just kind of keep going because you have to.
[ Silence ]