The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:25
Good morning, and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tanya flat again. I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me. Here on the scoop where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics, and so much more. We promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started.

Unknown Speaker 0:53
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning and welcome to the show. I am so happy that you're up with me this Sunday morning. As you know, it's October it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Last week we ushered in our first edition in the series where we're talking about breast cancer throughout the month of October. So we have four shows dedicated this month, we're continuing the journey. And I have two wonderful guests. I mentioned that Avis brown Riley would be with me for the duration. So I'm happy to have her in studio again this morning. Good morning, Avis.

Unknown Speaker 1:21
Good morning, Tanya, thanks so much for having me. It's always a joy to see you.

Unknown Speaker 1:26
Thank you. And this week. Joining us is Dr. Beverly math is a legend to many a friend to even more. And just a role model to all of us, Dr. Mathis, thank you for getting up this morning and joining us. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 1:44
I cannot think of any other place to be. So thank you for having me. And good morning, everyone.

Unknown Speaker 1:52
Good morning. The one thing we have in common that we all wish we didn't have in common but we do. Well, we wish we didn't have breast cancer in common because we would all probably prefer not to be breast cancers have had breast cancer. But the thing we do have in common that is the good thing is we have breast cancer survivors. And so this morning, we're just going to talk a little bit about what the journey was like for each one of us. You heard a little bit about Avis and I on the last show and I'll peel back the onion a bit more for myself. But with Dr. Mathis finger, our new guest this morning, Dr. Mathis, tell us a little bit about your breast cancer story and what happened to you.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
Okay, guys, when I had breast cancer, I was a beautiful 35 year old black woman that I felt was just in the prime of my life, right? I was the right side because I exercise every day. I was I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. And I worked every day. And I just thought everything was perfect. And you know what else I did every day? I made sure of I made sure that I had just taken care of myself. Right? Because I did my breath. I you know evaluated my breath. Air every day, basically because I did the feeling and the touching and the making sure that everything was all right. I thought I did the yearly check up. But to my surprise, the April the year 8889 school year because I was an amazing first grade teacher at that time. So everything was just, you know, it was just I thought perfect life, right living my best life. And we took our daughters to because we were both educators. So during Spring Break free vacation, which is in eighth, which was in April at that time, we took our daughters to the zoo in California. And guys, my oldest daughter wanted to ride an elephant. So we got on this elephant. Now think of this. I had gotten up that morning I had showered I had dressed it and saw nothing right. But when I got off of that elephant ride, all of a sudden, I had this big lump in my chest. And I and my husband I kept saying oh you know what? It's probably you know, because of your cycle and your glands. Well blah, blah, blah. Well, this big lump appeared in my chest. Well, being in California. We waited until we got home because I just thought it was gonna go away. Like it's a fear Well, it did. Because we stayed in California for the next couple of days at the, you know, just vacationing with our daughters. And as soon as I got back to Las Vegas, which was the, that Friday, Saturday, I contacted a doctor guy. And gentleman said to me, that I believe you have breast cancer. I have, I had no breast cancer. People. My mother died with all of her parts at the age of 92 years old. My you know, I had no breast cancer history in my family, right? Once he told me it was breast cancer, he suggested that I get a second opinion, which I did. And they had stated to me the doctors, both doctors, that it was so close to my breast of bone that they were just almost assured that it was it within my, the my bones. But guys as God was habit, it was not in my bone. And it had just, it was just in the area of my breath. So I had surgery, April 15. So listen at that, that's Tax Day, right? So I gave more than what was asked. had my surgery on April 15, you lose my breath. And I did have the remake and all but that was in 8889. And I did because they removed it. They told me 22 lymph nodes that I did not add and none of the lymph nodes had Brett had cancer in them. So I was given the opportunity of not having to take a chemo or any other treatment just had to make sure that I was visiting the doctors basically each month for a long, long time. And then of course, you know, the every six months, well, first every month, then every three months and every six months. So and let me tell you how long that has been guys. That was the 30 It's April 15 of this year 2023. It will I will be 36 years of rest, cancer free.

Unknown Speaker 7:45
Wow. That's the testament. I think that's and that was one of the reasons why I so want to have you include your story because it's powerful to hear from a woman who had breast cancer and has lived three additional almost almost four more decades because that those are the stories that we can add to have been diagnosed in the late 80s. And to have made you know, this journey, AVIs, I want to give you a chance to share your story and how you're and then I'll I'll share mine.

Unknown Speaker 8:19
Yeah. So you give me hope by sharing that story. 36 years cancer free. So I'm 13 years cancer free. So I'm actually start from the very beginning 2010 I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, and stage four. And I went in for my yearly mammogram January 2010. And they stated that something appeared to be abnormal, can I come back in for my follow up, which I did a few days later. And then I received the final notice stating that everything appeared to be normal. But in actuality, it wasn't normal. They should have diagnosed me then January of 2010 with stage one. So as I continued on with my life, you know, being a mother, a wife, Operations Manager for FedEx, express coaching golf, weren't a lot of different hats per se. I always lived a healthy life. And I when I heard you talk about your background and you know, Wow, I did everything that I was supposed to do exercise, eat right? And take my vitamins, what have you and I too, was the first person in my family to be diagnosed with breast cancer. So I in May of 2010 is when I found two lumps. So I was bathing and I found the two lumps under my right arm pit and they were hidden under the right muscle. So not one one but two, one was benign and one that was malignant. So I made the phone call to my doctor immediately I was she brought me in and says, Hey, Ava says go ahead and pull some tissue. And we did that. And within three days, I've received the call back from my doctor Patricia Pittenger, saying, AVIs, I'm so so sorry. But we have some sad news that you have been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. And so I was very, very fortunate that I was in the best hands with my doctor Julie Barone, and Dr. Jennifer Fisher as my oncologist. And they treated me as if they treated themselves because they too, was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I'm very, very thankful to having the best doctors in La Jolla. And I just want to give praise to God for allowing me to continue living this amazing journey that I'm on. And I believe he's, he's, he saved my life for purpose, because I'm living out that drink today. But just going back and thinking about how challenging it was to have to go through aggressive chemo and aggressive radiation, where my normal weight was 135, and I were down to 115. So I was just totally bones, you know, losing the hair, the whole nine yards. And, and because I had stage four, we had a private nurse in my home. And unfortunately, I was not able to allow others to come into my home, because I did not have the immune system to fight off any bacteria. But it was really hard for my kids, my daughter was 12 at the time, and my son was nine. And they're very, very supportive and long with my husband and my family. So I'm just so happy that I'm here today to be able to speak, encourage and engage with women, to let the listeners know that, hey, yes, it may be a battle. But we're going to start it and you're gonna finish it and keep that mental toughness, keep that mental darkness. And I can share with the listeners that of being a professional golfer, being one of the best junior golfers in the world at the age of 10, I was able to develop my mental capacity at full capacity. So I needed that not knowing years later, that I needed to pull that mental toughness back into place so that I too, can get through a very challenging time in my life. And I never asked why I just felt that God was using me as a vessel. And so today I travel around the country, promoting my book building of a champion, but also talking about breast cancer. And it's a pleasure to just be an ambassador for the American Cancer Society because they were very instrumental in helping me and provide me with all the necessary needs needs that I needed to get through. The challenge is that I was faced with and I

Unknown Speaker 12:41
remember the first time I found out that you had breast cancer, I was like what I think I might have been going through one of my own my own bouts with it. In my case. I was 32. My mother had died four years earlier as 29 My mother died from breast cancer that metastasized to her liver. And then her bones. She was 5859. Her birthday was 1999. I've always been special gift of discernment. I see things a little bit here things things come to me before they actually come to pass. And I see them in vivid color. And I remember as we were laying my mom Turris I have two brothers, two older brothers. And the middle brother said to me, we've always been very close. And he said, Are you afraid that you're going to be diagnosed with breast cancer? And as I hooked him, I looked at him and I said, this baby can't handle the truth. I don't know what it was you guys, but it washed over me and in that instant, said you will have breast cancer. And I said to my brother, no, I'm not afraid because I knew he couldn't handle it. Right. Four years later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And the hard thing for me was not dealing with the was at the first I'm a three time breast cancer survivor. So let me say at the first diagnosis, it wasn't dealing with the breast cancer. It was telling my family as my father was still grieving the death of my mother has his wife, mother of his children. And as my brothers was still just adjusting to there's no more mom because I had you know that mom that was like you guys. Christmas was everything. Thanksgiving was everything Easter was, you know, family was everything to her. And so I was working at the casino at the time I had been I came here in 95 as a reporter for the review journal. And I did that for five years and then I transitioned to gaming. And I had just left the casino actually had just I just left the casino and joined started working in the community with one of the Clark County Commissioners and I thought, I'm good. I'm busy. I'm moving around my mother passed away And then shortly thereafter, my aunt passed away on my dad's side. So I had a maternal and paternal space dealing with breast cancer and that's what prompted me to want a mammogram. So the annual check in with the OBGYN I asked for a mammogram. And they said, Oh, we don't do that. Let us you know, refer you out. So I went and got this what I thought would be this baseline screening for a mammogram until Friday night when the I get home and I checked the mail in the mail was a letter for Stein from Steinberg diagnostic medical imaging telling me I need to find a surgeon because they have abnormalities in this mammogram. So the the situation with a mammogram was my aunt, my dad's sister who lived here was my mammography. So my aunt did my mammogram on my breast. My aunt had the radiology tick, triple check, because why this is my niece, I need you to be 100% sure that what you think you see on this report is what you think you see. So, so from the time I did the mammogram to two or three weeks later, whatever, when the letter comes in the mail, my aunt is just sitting on this information waiting for her phone to ring because patient client privilege, she can't call me. So she had to wait for me to call her. And I remember getting a letter on a Friday night. So there's no one to call because it's about to be Saturday and Sunday. This was the hardest part of my initial diagnosis with it. I remember calling my best friend in Arizona and saying I got this letter. And she was like, Girl Shut up. I was like, Girl, let me read it to you. So I did. The next morning was a Friday night, Saturday morning at 10am I'm up in the house doing some stuff. My doorbell rang at 10am Open the door, you guys. That girl was standing at the door. She said there's no way I was gonna she had gotten up at three or four o'clock in the morning, are packed that night, whatever she had to do, got on the road by 5am and trekked across that desert from Phoenix to Las Vegas that there was no way I was going to let you sit in this house and wait till Monday to call somebody by yourself. And those are the moments that is like That's love. Love that. Those are the things that have held me up through it. But I ended up finding out that I had ductal carcinoma inside to stage zero breast cancer in my right breast, which is basically when as we shared in the first show of this segment, breast cancer is contained to the milk deck, Southbank. It's like having a cluster diamond ring to give you an example. And one of the there was a problem with one of the stones and you just take that stone out. And in the case of a diamond ring, it's maybe not okay, but in the case of your body isn't breast, everything else is okay. So to say that it's just affecting one stone in the cluster. So it's just affecting one duck in the in the rest. And they removed it. I declined radiation because in my spirit, I just couldn't settle one having I just didn't want radiation. And I went into a place kind of like you Dr. Mathis, where I had to get checked every six months so I got a mammogram. Then I got an MRI mammogram, MRI mammogram MRI, this went on for four years. I was diagnosed the first time in 2003. I hadn't had my 33rd birthday yet, in 2007. I had a second development. Same thing. ductal carcinoma inside two, stage zero, same breast. Pretty much same area. Let me back up my first one, I had three different areas that were at risk. Seven o'clock, nine o'clock and 11 o'clock. We never did anything with the 11 o'clock it was so deep, turned out to be nothing. So the problem was at seven o'clock 11 o'clock was my breast cancer either. So I had a second occurrence and went through and got scheduled for surgery. Well what happened with that one causing we think the third one, the radiology tech who put the bracket and so what they do is they'll have markers in your breast if you've had a situation, and it tells doctors where the breast cancer cells were. So in my case, because they did breast conservation, I just said a lumpectomy. Here's a marker of where the breast cancer was. This is the area before so they know here's where we're looking in the past is this new whatever. So the radiology tech put my mark are in for the surgery and in some kind of crazy way in the wrong place. Wrong way. So when my surgeon goes in, I'm under anesthesia. I'm out she's ready to do the procedure. It's marked wrong. She has to call the radiology tech and she's like, What have you done? It's unclear where I'm going. What did you do? So she extract to sales, woke me up, told me what happened. And then said, pathology report came And back clean. So it was either the BI app, the pathology report, what she extracted was either I had no other cancer than what we found in the biopsy on the second round, or she had missed it completely. About 966 months later, when I was due for a mammogram to keep tracking what was going on, I felt a lump under the surgical scar, and I was about five days from my scheduled mammogram. And it came back that I had breast cancer. And they considered that my third diagnosis and that became the, you know, during the journey, the second one, I was angry, I have to, you know, stick a pin in that and let you know that yes, I felt like I had already done this. So I was on a second journey. Right. And the third one was the one that ended up being chemotherapy and hair loss and all this other stuff. But my journey is long.

Unknown Speaker 20:57
And you're still here. Yes. So

Unknown Speaker 21:01
from my first one, I am 20 years, you know, as we share our anniversary years from the first diagnosis, it's 20 years later, 20

Unknown Speaker 21:08
years later, Yeah, amazing. My anniversary is December 13 being thrown lumbers coming up. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:16
But you know, it is a journey. It is it

Unknown Speaker 21:20
is. And you

Unknown Speaker 21:22
know what I said? I'm not a avis. I wasn't as strong as you Avis, because I did question it, I did. Cancer doesn't always mean down. And to believe and trust, you know, trust it, that God is going to do exactly what he promises. And that is to take care of that. So that's mine. You know, I at that time, I have a seven year old, and I had a four year old, both daughters. And I shared everything with them. Every, every the way, you know, every physical look. I talked about it at the cost. This was my hope and prayer was that my girl, he and Ashley would never be afraid to face what ever the ties what ever it is. Because I wanted them to know that as God took care of me, He will take care of them. And then Tanya heard you say, family, family is everything to me. Extended family, every church, family, everything to me. With, with all of those people praying and being just a part of your life, letting you know, hey, you're okay. You all right. And with just great doctors. I had great doctors who did because of my age because of the stage at the cost of everything. Hey, we need to remove this whole breath. We need to get all of those tissues out. Right.

Unknown Speaker 23:13
To your best chance. Yeah, you know, and nowadays, nowadays with that when they do it, women are having double mastectomy. Yeah, because there was a time when it first started. They were only going to deal with the breast that was involved. For the most part. I'm not saying limited to that. But it was the first. Oh my gosh, once again, we're we're in a place where we're down to the last five minutes that we can talk about this this morning. And I know we're going to bring more of it this month. But Dr. Mathis, thank you for sharing your story with Avis and I, I want to just ask each one of you to share something that you would leave listeners with who are facing a diagnosis and the middle of a journey dealing with a loved one who's going through it trying to figure out how to be a good support system to that person. And we're talking about it from the female perspective by let me by no means discount. It's not just about women, it's about husbands. It's about boyfriends. It's about sons. It's about grandsons. This is breast cancer. I remember as a journalist taking my mom to radiate to a radiology appointment one time and sitting around waiting with other people for her to come back or them to finish up with the radiation treatment that day, and saying the concern and sadness on people's faces because they were all there for a loved one who was not well who was a breast cancer patient. And I said to myself, Wow, the faces of breast cancer. It is so different on everyone. I could see the worry on a husband's face the sadness on a daughter's son's face, the lack of understanding for a child just you know, why are we here? but it just has this effect on everyone. And the effect is different. But what say you to encourage?

Unknown Speaker 25:08
Yes, I'd like to encourage the listeners to make sure that you go and get your yearly mammogram is the uncertainty that brings the fear factor. There's nothing to be afraid about. Go do it. And you'll feel so much better about yourself. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States except for skin scuze. Me except for skin cancer. proximately 12.9% of women will be diagnosed with female breast cancer at some point during their lifetimes. In 2018, there was an estimated amount of over 3 million women living with female breast cancer in the United States. And as of the end of 2020, there were 7.8 million women alive who was diagnosed with breast cancer in the past five years, making it making it the world's most prevalent cancer. So in 2023, an estimated amount of over 200, over two, almost close to 300,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. I was watching the news here the other day in Vegas and saw that there are over 202,000 women that are are diagnosed here in Las Vegas alone. So I just encourage everyone to go out and get your mammogram. Stay positive about it some mental fight, but you have that mental strength to get through it. And you will get through it.

Unknown Speaker 26:44
Yes, Dr. Mathis, I'm gonna give you two of our last three minutes. What do you say?

Unknown Speaker 26:49
Really quick. I know. First of all, I echo everything that you guys have said. But my my first one, for sure is, you know what? Make sure that you go ahead and check yourself. Check your body, you know your body better than anybody else. And you know, when that little, the Spirit is saying to you, hey, this doesn't feel right. Or that wasn't there before. Don't get excuse it, go and see about Yes. And then talk about it with your family talk about what it is you're thinking, always talk about it. And then guys, these organizations. They are just great breast cancer organizations that are right there to help. And they will get out and just keep remembering. You know, we are who made that. keep remembering that. And just keep trusting God is my statement. Just keep trusting God and just move forward. Keep moving forward. Keep moving forward. Keep moving. Keep living. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. And just talk to the people that you know, Tanya. Yeah, great, great, great resource for all of us. So thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you do.

Unknown Speaker 28:31
Thank you. Yes. Thank

Unknown Speaker 28:32
you, Tanya,

Unknown Speaker 28:33
thank you both for spending time this morning on the radio show talking about this. It's so important. Not just this month, but every month and all the time. As Eva has mentioned, so many women and families are affected by breast cancer. I want to thank you all for tuning in. I hope you have gotten some great takeaways. I hope that we are encouraging you answering some questions giving some hope. In this month of breast cancer awareness. We are going to continue to do that this month. It's not something that you can sum up in 30 minutes or an hour. So we're going to give it its due diligence. Thank you for tuning in this week. And I hope you'll join us again next week when we have another interesting and enlightening conversation about a not so wonderful topic, but one that we can't quite get away from just yet. Breast cancer for breast cancer awareness month. Thank you ladies and have a wonderful week.

Unknown Speaker 29:21
Thank you, Tanya.

Unknown Speaker 29:23
Thanks. Bye bye. Bye bye bye. I want to thank you for tuning into the scoop with me Tony Flanagan and I want to invite you to get social with me I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle ta n YAFLA na ga n. You can also find me on Instagram at Tanya almond eyes Flanagan and if you have a thought and opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tanya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in. Stay safe and have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai