A breast cancer diagnosis turns your world upside down, and yet, the rest of your life doesn’t stop. How do you manage diagnosis and treatment in the midst of caring for kids — or in the case of this episode’s novel, after your husband tells you he’s cheated on you? We’re joined by Katie Yee, author of “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar,” and Mayo Clinic breast cancer expert Dr. Lida Mina, to explore how Katie’s book illuminates the emotional and medical realities of a breast cancer diagnosis.
A breast cancer diagnosis turns your world upside down, and yet, the rest of your life doesn’t stop. How do you manage diagnosis and treatment in the midst of caring for kids — or in the case of this episode’s novel, after your husband tells you he’s cheated on you? We’re joined by Katie Yee, author of “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar,” and Mayo Clinic breast cancer expert Dr. Lida Mina, to explore how Katie’s book illuminates the emotional and medical realities of a breast cancer diagnosis.
This episode was made possible by generous support from Ken Stevens.
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Dr. Denise Millstine
Welcome to the “Read. Talk. Grow.” podcast, where we explore women’s health topics through books. Our topic today is breast cancer, and our book is “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar” by Katie Yee. I'm your host, Dr. Denise Millstine. I'm an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, where I practice women's health, internal medicine, and integrative medicine.
My guests today are Katie Yee, who's a writer from Brooklyn. She's received fellowships from the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and Kundiman. By day, she works at the Brooklyn Museum. By night, she writes, usually under the watch of her judgmental rescue dog, Ollie. “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar” is her first novel. Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie Yee
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Our expert guest is Dr. Lida Mina, who's an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Mayo Clinic in Arizona and the chair of the Mayo Arizona Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Disease working groups. Dr. Mina has more than 45 publications and has a special interest in developing new treatment strategies for breast cancer. Lida, welcome to the show.
Dr. Lida Mina
Thank you, Denise, for having me.
Dr. Denise Millstine
“Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar,” what a great title, is a contemporary novel of a woman whose life is rocked by two major events. The first is her husband's admission of infidelity with a woman named Maggie. And the second is a tumor in her breast, which is found to be cancer and which she quite darkly names Maggie as well. And this is the Maggie we will predominantly be talking about today.
Okay, you both know how “Read. Talk. Grow.” works; we discuss books that portray health topics in an effort to better understand health experiences through story. In this case, we'll be talking about breast cancer.
Katie, congratulations on all the success of your debut novel. I have been seeing it on front tables in bookstores and in so many reading-related newsletters. Tell us your inspiration for Maggie, especially the breast cancer plotline.
Katie Yee
Thank you so much for that warm welcome. Yeah, I guess I'll just dive right in. When I started writing “Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar,” I was thinking about breast cancer because unfortunately, this is something that runs in my family. So I've watched my mother go through it and my grandmother as well.
And I think, you know, so much of the way that I understand the world comes from writing fiction. So I think when I was grappling with these realities, the way that I processed a lot of it was by putting it in a story and trying to honor their stories and the things that they've gone through in this novel.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I love that. We've talked a bit about how incredibly powerful it can be to write your own story, and also to write fiction, to walk through some of life's events that can be intimidating, traumatizing, all of the above. So I really like how you said that you processed these journeys by writing your fiction. Lida, we'd love to hear your impression of the book, and also to know what it's like to be a medical oncologist who focuses on breast cancer.
Dr. Lida Mina
I really enjoyed this book. It truly resonated with me, not just as a doctor, but as a woman. I was deeply moved, how like it's addressed, like those powerful themes of cancer, divorce, motherhood, and still be able to keep a lot of warmth and lightness, which truly made it like uplifting instead of a depressing kind of dark book.
Katie Yee
Thank you.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Tell us what it's like to take care of women with breast cancer.
Dr. Lida Mina
I think I mean, the main thing is that, like Katie, kind of and you alluded to initially, like breast cancer is not one disease. So it's very different. And a lot of time we think of it as deadly and it's kind of done and the end of the road. So I think in my practice, more than 50% of the time, we have women that are survivors and are able to get through that obstacle. And I'm happy to kind of say that with all of the advances, we are seeing cure for this type of disease. So it truly makes a huge difference for the medical oncologists.
Dr. Denise Millstine
And listeners can't see that you're still very young, Lida, but even in the course of your career, you have seen treatment for breast cancer change dramatically. Katie, the cruel trick for the narrator is that not only is she told that her husband is having this affair, but then she discovers this tumor in her breast, which we said is diagnosed as a cancer. And it's true illness happens, never in a vacuum, always in the context of other things happening in life. Was this one of your points and do you agree with that statement?
Katie Yee
Yes, definitely. I think, you know, while it's obviously something that changes your life in a really immediate way, I think it also like a diagnosis like that can also really help put things and priorities into perspective. I do think one of the things that I was trying to accomplish in writing the story is showing that life does kind of have to go on, right? Like even when you get a devastating diagnosis, the kids still have to be shepherded to school and things might be happening in your love life. Other things that are so far out of your control are still going to keep happening, and it's kind of a balancing act of how to take care of yourself and your health and lean on the people around you to help you get through it all. And how to deal with all of these things at once.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I love how you said that, because I think also for many women, we don't necessarily prioritize taking care of ourselves. And we see that with Maggie. She's just got this whole world turned upside down, and she feels this pain in her chest, and she thinks it's because in many ways, she's heartbroken and grieving this change in her marriage and her relationship and her whole world. And then she realizes like, oh, I actually need to get this checked out. So I just love how poignantly you portrayed that. Thank you for that.
Lida, the novel is told in short vignettes. Some are just a few lines long. One of the shortest is cancer cells start out like any other normal cells. What makes them a danger is the way they mutate. And then they refuse to die. What do you think of that line?
Dr. Lida Mina
I think it's very close to what we tell our patients. I mean, it's basically normal cells gone wrong and gone out of the pathway and acquired some mutations and, I mean, we basically say they start making mistakes and the body, unfortunately sometimes doesn't have the way to repair it. And they go out and start dividing without any purpose.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I know we don't actually find out what exact type of tumor Maggie is in the novel, but maybe this would be a good point, Lida, to just talk really briefly about the different types of breast cancer in big terms. So thinking about lobular breast cancers, invasive breast cancers, ductal cancers, what do all those words mean?
Dr. Lida Mina
So in general, when we look into breast cancer, there are two things we look into. We look at what we call the stage and we look at the biology. So it's kind of looking at quantity and quality, like what's kind of how much spread it is that defines the stage and what's fueling the tumor or making it happen, which is basically the biology.
For the stage, breast cancer, like many cancers, goes from stage one to stage four. And unless it's a stage four, or metastatic or spread disease, stage one to three is still very curable. So something that we can achieve a complete control of in most of the cases, not in every case.
And this is where biology comes into perspective because the cure, the treatment, everything depends on the biology. Even if a tumor is small, it all depends on what subtype. And the most common subtype is usually the invasive ductal; that basically starts in the ducts of the breast. The second most common is the invasive lobular; that starts in the lobules. And it's not only about what it's like where it's starting, it's also about what's kind of actually fueling the cancer. And we basically have the pathologists stain the biopsy to figure out if this is estrogen driven, progesterone driven, HER2 driven, so that we can figure out what's the ideal target we can go after in our treatment.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I just want to summarize that really, really succinctly. So you said stage is about how far progressed the cancer is. And that's going to be, you said stage one to stage four. Although there are some noninvasive stage zero cancers as well. And then you have the biology which is sort of the source of the cancer. And then I think of it as its characteristics, whether it's ductal, lobular, or whether it's hormone positive or negative or sensitive or not sensitive. So I love how you encapsulated all of that, and you did it so quickly for such a huge topic. Thank you for that.
Katie, you talk about the narrator's imaging and ultrasound guided biopsy in really vivid detail. Do you think this is the hardest part for women who are finding a lump, or being told there's something abnormal on their breast imaging, is to go through this diagnostic process and then to especially wait for the pathology diagnosis.
Katie Yee
I definitely think that's a big part of it. I mean, so my I'm going to talk a little bit about my own family history, if that's helpful or interesting. So my grandmother had breast cancer and the first time my mother was diagnosed with it, she was in her 40s. So that's quite young, I think.
Because it runs in the family, I myself have been like doing a lot of screenings for breast cancer. And I think when I was like a teenager, I did have to have something like biopsied. And I think that experience can feel just so lonely. I feel like I don't often see a lot of depictions of the specifics of that process in like, popular culture and media. And I just think, yeah, the experience of working with a radiologist and going through those screenings can feel very isolating and I kind of wanted to bring that more to light.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I think it's brilliant. So many women go through this process of biopsy. Lida, you see these patients all the time. And I think one thing that's hard, Katie, is that for people like Dr. Mina and breast radiologists, this is something they do every day. But for the woman going through it, this is not a usual experience for her. Lida, do you agree?
Dr. Lida Mina
That's truly kind of right on point, because when we see the patient, we already have the diagnosis. So it's great to put that into our mind. Like, I mean, they've been waiting for a week or two to kind of know and usually we want to wait to kind of figure out exactly the details of the biology. So it's good to have the medical oncologist take a look at that part, because in our mind, it's okay to wait until we have more information. But for a woman who's actually waiting and not knowing, it's really debilitating.
Katie Yee
Please correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Mina, but I feel like even in my own life, I've been seeing more of like, even my friends. Like having to get screened for this kind of thing. Like, much younger than I thought we'd ever have to be dealing with this. I'm 29 years old, so I'm talking about people in their in their 20s, in their early 30s.
There is this fantastic show called “The Bold Type,” which is just about these like young women who've met at like a women's magazine. And the one of the characters, Jane, her mother died of breast cancer before the show began. So we're starting the show, and she's writing for this women's magazine and thinking about issues of breast cancer. I feel like that's like one of the only other instances in, like a TV show that I've really seen them go through. What is the BRCA test? Why is it important to get genetic testing, especially at like a young age?
I don't know if this is a good jumping off point to ask you kind of about your experience, Dr. Mina. Maybe with like younger patients and the importance of sharing information about getting these screenings.
Dr. Lida Mina
No, I think that's a very good point because we have seen an increase in breast cancer rates and specifically in the younger patient population. The truth is some of it is definitely genetics and but that but most of it is environmental unfortunately. And we truly do not know what's kind of causing that increase. There is obviously the part where we have gotten better about like the screening, raising awareness, and there is a big disparity between different countries. But we have seen that increase nearly across everywhere.
And I think raising that awareness, talking about it with your family members, a lot of women, they didn't know they had a family member with cancer up until they were diagnosed themselves. So it is very important to discuss your family history with your family and know, I think the most important point like you brought up, the younger a person is diagnosed, the higher the risk of getting breast cancer also at a younger age, and even the biology of the disease at a younger age is very different.
So breast cancer is very common. But when it happens in a woman who is in her 80s, the biology of it, how it grows, it's usually very slow growing, very much not life threatening, very different than cancer happening at a younger age. So it is important to be aware of your body to do your exams regularly. And if you have any doubt, just ask and be aware of your family history.
Katie Yee
Yeah, I love what you said about that. Just because I feel like and this might be like a cultural thing, but like, especially in my family, there was definitely a lot of stigma and definitely a lot of like shame around diagnosis. So the first time my mom got breast cancer, like she didn't actually tell me, she didn't tell anyone, which I imagine was like, I mean, aside from like my dad and probably her best friend, I imagine that that was like an extremely lonely experience. So I just I love what you said about asking about family history.
Dr. Lida Mina
We encourage every woman. Like the moment we give the diagnosis, we encourage them to get all of their support team to know. And I think it's not only like family, friends, work, like you need all of them to help you through the process.
Dr. Denise Millstine
I want to emphasize a couple things that you both just said there. So young breast cancer is really important in terms of how it affects the next generation’s risk. So Katie, you said, I believe that your mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time in her 40s. And you said, I think that's young. That absolutely is young.
In many ways. We will distinguish between premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancer, which as a general rule, most women go through menopause around the age of 50 to 52. And so if it's somebody who's had breast cancer in your family, that's before that age of 50, there's a good chance that that was a premenopausal breast cancer and that might confer risk to their first-degree relatives. So their daughter or their sister.
Lida, I wonder if you'll just comment really quickly about genetic cancers. Now, you made the point that environment is a bigger driver, probably. And these younger breast cancers that we're seeing now. But the narrator also had a mother who had a breast cancer who hadn't had genetic testing. And so can you just comment about what are these genetic breast cancers. Although we did talk about BRCA, a high risk mutations in Episode #33. But still I just want you to hammer this down. Who should be worried about genetic predisposition to breast cancer. What does that mean?
Dr. Lida Mina
I think any time we have a diagnosis like you mentioned, it is important to look into at what age there was the diagnosis, premenopausal versus post-menopausal. How many family members have been diagnosed and with each family member how old they were. It's also important to get that full pedigree because some families do not have a lot of aunts, do not have a lot of like on either side and sometimes that can like sway us one way or the other. But the younger the woman, the higher the risk of having a genetic mutation.
So in general the genetic predisposition is less than 10%. But that can be variable based on what we talked about, like the age, the number of family members and not only family members diagnosed with breast cancer, but also diagnosed with ovarian, pancreatic, even father with prostate cancer. So a lot of time we focus on thinking, okay, this is only from mother’s side because it's breast cancer, but we need to take into consideration both paternal and maternal. We need to take into consideration not only breast cancer, but also ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, sarcomas, certain melanomas even, so there is a lot of those.
So in general, if we see a certain predisposition, we do send for a comprehensive what we call germline testing, to look into not only the most common mutations, like what we call the BRCA1 and BRCA2, but there are also actually close to 100 genes that could be related directly or indirectly to breast cancer that we actually test for. And we have amazing genetic counselors that can help you to guide you on which best gene panel to go for. But it's definitely not just the BRCA1 and BRCA2.
And the other important thing about genetic testing is, in women who have more advanced disease or even more higher risk disease, knowing the mutation can help with the treatment, because now we have treatments that are targeting those mutations. So knowledge is power. The more you can get that information, the better.
Dr. Denise Millstine
So incredible. More than 100 genes known and more are being discovered all the time.
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Katie, in the novel we see several really important relationships with the narrator, the closest of which is with her best friend, Darlene. And I really love the way Darlene sums up the narrator's tumor. On one of their walks she says, “Did you know breast cancer is the most common type of cancer there is? You’re basic Maggie,” talking to the tumor, of course.
I think you're trying to make this point that so many women go through this and that this cancer is not, you know, necessarily an unusual cancer, right?
Katie Yee
Definitely. I think something that's been both surprising and not surprising, as I've been like going out and doing events and meeting readers, is the number of people who've come up to me afterwards to be like, thank you for writing this. My mother, my grandmother, my sister, my best friend, pretty much everyone I've encountered has unfortunately had a story to share about breast cancer, and it's horrible that it's so common, but I'm so grateful that people have felt comfortable and vulnerable and interested in sharing this thing that kind of binds us.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Yeah, I think it was a great choice to keep the details not so specific so that many, many women can see themselves or see someone they care about in this part of the character's journey. So thank you for that.
Katie Yee
I really appreciate that. Right, because I feel like so many of the narratives around cancer, actually, the other one I'm thinking of that's like in pop culture is the original, “Sex in the City,” when Samantha gets diagnosed with breast cancer, I think in like season six, and she does have to go through chemo. And while that is and Dr. Mina, I'm sure you could talk more eloquently than I could about kind of the ratio or the percentage of patients that do have to go through intense chemotherapy like that.
What had happened from more personal experience, watching my own family members go through it, is for them the biology was more like hormone positive, as I understand it. So chemotherapy was not the course of treatment that was recommended. It had more to do with like hormone pills and taking other kinds of oral medication.
Dr. Lida Mina
You say that because it is true the majority do not need the chemotherapy. And I think most people are really like, I mean we're all grateful that that's the case. But I think the big elephant in the room is the hormonal therapy, in my opinion, can be more debilitating than and I think a big part of why we are able to avoid chemo is that we rely on those anti-estrogen pills.
So a lot of time when we kind of even with very early stage like a stage one or stage two, in the past we used to do chemotherapy and then we realized that the biology, like you said, it's like more hormonally driven. So we can use actually targets to go after those cancer cells, which is a blessing.
But at the same time, those medications do have a lot of side effects. And unfortunately, 50% of the women end up not taking those medications, which is kind of my plea to kind of raise awareness on how important taking those medications are because they are saving lives. And initially when we tell a woman like, you don't need chemo, I think the worst thing is to to like and I learned that to tell them, oh, you just need a pill. I mean, that's the worst thing because it's never just that pill. It is a medication that actually is working on micro cancer cells and the blood system. It is saving lives.
It is making a difference between cure and recurrence and a year to five, ten, 20 years. We see breast cancer recur even I've seen up to 35 years. And the difference is taking those anti-estrogen medication that unfortunately affect a woman not only like mentally, physically, hormonally.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Can I just clarify what you said though, Lida. Because I think what you're saying is that these medications, it's a pill that you take every day at home, are incredibly powerful. They can at times shrink the tumor before it's been resected, or taken out surgically. And then once you've gone through surgical treatment with or without radiation, many women will take these medications for several years to follow, usually five years to follow.
And I think what you're saying is that even though it seems like it's just a pill, how powerful can it be? It's incredibly powerful, and that it does come with side effects. But these are things that we really try hard to help women, mostly women, navigate so that they can finish that course of treatment so that they can reduce their risk of recurrence. Did I say anything wrong there?
Dr. Lida Mina
Absolutely. Denisa, I need you in my clinic. And that's the reason we need a women's health clinic and that's the reason we need menopausal clinic. And basically experts that help the oncologist and the patient focus on all of those other aspects. But because as a medical oncologist, we can just write the prescription and say, okay, you can go get the pill. It's going to be okay. I think exactly for the reason you mentioned, we need to address all the other issues.
Dr. Denise Millstine
And Katie, you give the narrator the option for treatment. She is, we've just said, going through this separation and eventually this divorce, she's obviously taking care of her children at times by herself then. And so you present to her, her first treatment option, which is going to be surgical, which is very common for a localized breast cancer, meaning a breast cancer that hasn't left the breast right.
And so they offer her a lumpectomy, which is most likely going to need radiation with is, which is typical, or a mastectomy where they remove almost the entire breast tissue. You have her choose lumpectomy because that's a bit more convenient for her. The recovery is going to be faster. All of that. Can you talk a little bit about that choice? Was it difficult to make?
Katie Yee
I think being so in the narrator's head, I just thought that her priority and her first instinct and her gut reaction and her just first always thought was going to be about her children. So I think for her, we do a little bit of like a fictional sleight of hand here. Her kids are conveniently at their grandparent’s house for a lot of the time that she's, like recovering from her surgery.
But I think, yeah, the first thing that she would be thinking is like, what will be the thing that is easiest to kind of conceal, right, from my children? I don't want to scare them. I want to be able to pick up my daughter. I know there's like, there's restrictions on like, exercise and how much weight you can pick up after something like that. I think I was just going off of what I thought her natural instinct was going to be.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Again, I think it's just so on point, Katie, because all women are balancing multiple things at once. And so it's very interesting where if you just took this isolated decision by itself, you might make it one way. But then when you think about, am I going to be able to lift up my daughter, you might make it a different way.
Lida, there's something else that comes into her treatment that I'm hoping you'll comment on. And we've talked about chemo a little bit, but this is a score that she gets after surgery that determines whether or not she's likely to benefit from additional therapy, namely chemotherapy. What is that score? Is that something you do typically.
Dr. Lida Mina
So if we want to first go into the types of breast cancer like as a as a big umbrella, the most common type of breast cancer is estrogen-driven. And that's kind of the hormonally driven more than almost 80%. In 10 to 15% we have the worst kind, that's triple negative, that always needs chemotherapy. And another 10 to 15% or so, we have the HER2-positive. That's also needs chemotherapy most of the time and anti-HER2. And the rest is, like I mentioned, more than 70 or close to 80%, are the hormonally driven estrogen positive.
But even with that, within that range, there are two types; the one that only kind of is very much dependent on the estrogen, we call it the Luminal A, more on the slow growing. And there is the one that kind of depends on the estrogen, but also has other pathways to divide. And that's what we call like higher risk, still estrogen driven, but not as much. And we do in this case, what we call the Oncotype DX testing, which is genetic testing but it's kind of like genetic testing on the cancer cells. So it's basically testing the genes in the biopsy or in the surgical specimen that was removed and kind of questioning that cancer cell to see what how aggressive it is looking so that we can approximate what's the risk of it causing a recurrence in the future, and what's going to be the benefit of adding chemotherapy. So my guess is, Katie, that’s what you were going for.
Katie Yee
Yes, that's exactly what I was going for but you put it so much better than I ever could have.
Dr. Denise Millstine
We talk a lot with authors about how there's this enormous amount of research that goes into novels to then boil down to one or two lines. And I just thought that when I read this part of your novel, I thought she had to read and learn, if you didn't already know about this testing, and then it just becomes two sentences. So I really hope listeners appreciate the research that fiction authors go through to get these types of details right.
Katie, as some of the vignettes talk about the waiting rooms and who can be found there. The narrator says you might see superstars, friends like Darlene, or a relative. You might also say waiting room hobbies, like knitting or holding and pretending to read a book. Was this for comic relief?
Katie Yee
Definitely, definitely for comic relief. I mean, I think the waiting room is unfortunately you know, a room in this process that I've had a lot of experience, like sitting in with family members and I just feel like it was kind of ripe for, right, exactly, comic relief. There are so many weird details, I think, in waiting rooms in hospitals, like for example, why are the paper cups so small? Why do you have to keep filling out this form and kind of putting each letter of your answer into like a teeny tiny box? Just things like that, that I that I find myself thinking when I'm in rooms like this. I wanted somewhere to put that.
But I also think the other thing that I wanted to capture is that even though this is an extremely hard time and a really hard circumstance, there can be still some like joy and camaraderie, like especially amongst the mostly women that you see in these waiting rooms.
I feel like that's not really something that I often saw in fiction. I'm thinking specifically of my mom found out that this was the crossing guard who was working outside of my elementary school, had also had breast cancer, and this was like a great moment of bonding for the two of them. I think they were able to kind of, you know, share, you know, tips and tricks and feelings. And I think that that is like a really unique connection and I wanted to honor that.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Lida, I’d imagine you would agree and I also thought the waiting room and the role of Darlene was such an important emphasis on how important it is to be surrounded when you're going through a diagnosis like this. And like the narrator, she chooses who she pulls into that circle. She chooses to not pull in her now ex-husband, but to really double down on this friend who's been so supportive of her. Can you comment how important it is to have a support system when you're going through a cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Dr. Lida Mina
I think this is the most important is basically to bring in your cheerleaders and to prioritize yourself. I think I mean, like you said, a woman completely forget about taking care of themselves, and they're all worried about what's going to happen with the kids and with this. And again, I think bringing in your social support and having them here for you is really helpful, because this is a lifetime journey.
And I think what a lot of us forget is even after they're done with chemo, it's not over. So you really want your close friends to know that, that this is going to affect you lifelong. This is going to affect your mental status, your. Even if you become physically, completely fine, this is still something that is going to affect the rest of your life. And I think we always underestimate the caregiver role and really they make a huge difference.
Katie Yee
Yeah, the caregiver also needs caregiving. Exactly what you said, Dr. Mina, like everyone needs someone to kind of lean on in a situation like that. I mean, even just and I mean, how many times did I try to go with my, my mom to certain appointments and she'd be like, well, there's nothing to do, right? Like all I'm doing is just kind of sitting and waiting, and then I'll talk to the doctor for a little bit. And then there's really there's no heavy lifting, like there's nothing at all for you to do. No need to come.
But I think that can feel really lonely. And I mean, even if it's like, quote unquote, just kind of like sitting in the waiting room next to someone, I think that can really have a big emotional impact. And I mean, when you're talking to a doctor, I feel like there is there's just such an onslaught of information, especially when you're kind of just being pulled into this world, that I do think it can be really helpful to have a friend just sitting there taking notes, right? Because there's so much like fact and emotion, a process at the same time. And it's so helpful to kind of have a sounding board for that.
Dr. Denise Millstine
100%. Just being that extra support in the room and set of ears is incredibly powerful, and there are many ways that people can support other people going through difficult things. One of my favorite that I can't resist bringing up, Katie, is Darlene bringing the narrator to the bookstore. She wants to get a book about raising children in divorce, and only a friend like Darlene will bring her, not to the local bookshop where everybody knows her, but to the local chain bookstore where she's completely invisible and nobody will remember which type of book she bought. That was just brilliant.
Katie Yee
Thank you.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Before we wrap up, I'd love to hear from each of you. What you really want listeners to know about breast cancer, and anything more about supporting someone going through breast cancer treatment.
Katie Yee
I mean, I think it's kind of everything we've been talking about. I really hope that if you're listening to this, you feel like if you're going through something like this, you can lean on the people around you and also like, it's not your fault. Dr. Mina, you said this at the beginning. It's kind of just like the body or the cells have made a mistake. It's very human. It's such a human experience. It's not your fault. There are other people who have gone through the exact same thing. And I think, I hope that you're gentle with the stories that you're telling yourself about this experience.
Dr. Denise Millstine
That's really beautiful.
Dr. Lida Mina
I would say. I mean, exactly like what we talked about, it is really important to know your body. And if you're having any doubts, just ask. Ask your doctor, your primary, about anything that you feel is off in your body. Nobody knows you more than you, so just ask. And once you face this diagnosis, just to make sure that you have everyone around you that really cares about you, kind of be your support, help them and basically make sure that you're comfortable with your doctor so that you're able to ask all the questions you need. Because this is not a one and done. So you need to be completely comfortable with your whole medical team, so that you feel comfortable asking any question that can come up.
Dr. Denise Millstine
Build that support team around you and build that medical team where you feel held and in good hands. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. It's really been my pleasure to talk about Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar” with Katie Yee and Dr. Lida. Mina. Thank you both for being here on the show today.
Katie Yee
This was fantastic. Thank you so much.
Dr. Lida Mina
Thank you.
Dr. Denise Millstine
“Read. Talk. Grow.”is a product of the Women's Health Center at Mayo Clinic. This episode was made possible by the generous support of Ken Stevens. Our producer is Lisa Speckhard Pasque and our recording engineer is Rick Andresen.
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