Breast cancer survivor Carolyn Choate is glad she's taken the opportunity to reevaluate her cancer experience and see it for what it truly was. And is.
PUBLISHED March 14, 2018
Carolyn Choate recently retired from the TV production industry to write full-time. Diagnosed at 45 with stage 3 estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in 2003, she underwent two radical mastectomies without reconstruction. Carolyn credits Angela Brodie, Ph.D., and her discovery of the aromatase inhibitor, for saving her life and those of millions of women globally. In the summer of 2017, Carolyn and her older daughter kayaked from New Hampshire to Baltimore in tribute to Dr. Brodie. When not informing others about Dr. Brodie and the “living flat” movement, Carolyn enjoys gardening, cooking and RVing with her family and dog.
News flash: I did not harbor aliens. Not illegal aliens, not space aliens, not any kind of alien. No monsters either. The rogue cell in my right breast that declared war on its neighbors and yours truly, fundamentally, was a mole. One of my own. A sleeper agent who slipped right past me and received an encrypted message I couldn’t decipher. How could I, locked as it was in my DNA? It’s a code so complicated experts still haven’t figured it all out.
Why am I telling you this now? I reopened the cold case years after my diagnosis and treatment for stage 3B ER-positive breast cancer, and there’s new information to report.
Originally, I was absolutely convinced that a foreign body – I may have called it a monster more than once – had invaded my breast. An evil, ugly, space alien-kind-of-looking creature with slits for eyes and teeth like piranha, that multiplied way faster than the fruit flies I studied in college biology.
Anyway, the day the surgeon told me that the punch biopsy showed well-defined cancer cells in my areola and that she scheduled a radical mastectomy for the following week, I was pretty much hysterical for the duration.
Why am I telling you this now? I reopened the cold case years after my diagnosis and treatment for stage 3B ER-positive breast cancer, and there’s new information to report.
Originally, I was absolutely convinced that a foreign body – I may have called it a monster more than once – had invaded my breast. An evil, ugly, space alien-kind-of-looking creature with slits for eyes and teeth like piranha, that multiplied way faster than the fruit flies I studied in college biology.
Anyway, the day the surgeon told me that the punch biopsy showed well-defined cancer cells in my areola and that she scheduled a radical mastectomy for the following week, I was pretty much hysterical for the duration.
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