Know Your Own Body

A diagnostic mammogram was normal, but after an ultrasound, Eaton could tell her doctor was worried. Eaton had a biopsy. On her 43rd birthday, she looked at her own results in the electronic medical record. She had cancer — invasive ductal carcinoma.

The next day, Eaton met with Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) surgical oncologist Laura Rosenberger, MD, chief of breast surgery at Duke Regional Hospital. She felt a second lump in Eaton’s left breast. That led to an MRI and two more biopsies, which showed invasive ductal carcinoma, as well as a third area of concern.

In just one month, Eaton was supposed to be moving her family to Rhode Island for a new job at Brown University.

Rosenberger performed a double mastectomy. The surgery and subsequent testing revealed the third concerning area was invasive lobular carcinoma. This cancer was positive for a protein called HER2/neu, which meant she would need chemotherapy as well as a year of the targeted drug, Herceptin.

Eaton had a port placed for chemotherapy before moving to Rhode Island.

She says the care she received at DCI was amazing. “I have recommended Laura Rosenberger to multiple friends since I’ve left,” she says. “She is absolutely kind and brilliant and an amazing surgeon.”

Eaton stayed in touch with her Duke oncologist, Kelly Westbrook, MD. “I trust her opinion more than anyone else’s that I’ve ever encountered in oncology,” she says. “She called me back quite late in the evening when she should have been at home with her own family.” When there were differing opinions about what chemotherapy regimen to use, Westbrook took it back to a team of other medical oncologists at Duke to get recommendations.

In addition, a child life specialist from Duke’s Cancer Patient Support Program advised Eaton about how to talk to her children, who were five and eight at the time. “She was incredibly helpful and gave me tons of information about how to educate my children about my cancer,” Eaton says. The specialist advised her to be honest, and to use the word “cancer.”

Advocating for Yourself

“It has been hard to bounce back, but now that I’ve completed all my surgery, I’m working hard to rebuild my strength,” she says. Eaton posts workout inspiration and reflections on life as a cancer survivor on Instagram at @no_excuses_chick.

For her, the experience has driven home the point that ”breast cancer is common and often quite random.”

“I was healthy, active, had a normal BMI. I breastfed my children. I did all the things I was supposed to do,” she says.

Eaton advises women to advocate for themselves and know their own bodies. “Ask that your doctor listen to your concerns even if they don’t fit the algorithm,” she says. All of her mammograms were normal, and it wasn’t that they were misread; the cancer simply did not show up. Eaton has dense breast tissue, as 40 to 50 percent of women ages 40 to 74 do.

“If you have any concerns about the reliability of your routine screening or whether or not it’s meaningful for you, ask your doctor — ‘should I be getting an ultrasound, should I be getting an MRI, should I be doing routine self exams?’” Eaton says. “Being a doctor myself, I would always take whatever my doctor said as verbatim, and now I’m more likely to ask questions and not feel like I’m annoying or contradicting the physician.”