The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Good morning, and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tanya Flanagan, 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.

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You morning

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Las Vegas, and welcome to another edition of the scoop with me. Tonya Flanagan, we are in the month of October, and it is breast cancer awareness month, which is very near and dear to my heart. Those who know me know I am a three time breast cancer survivor. Those who don't know me, I'm a three time breast cancer survivor. Yes, three times. We are going to open up the month of October with a series of discussions about this deadly disease that has, over the years, become less deadly. And this morning, I am very pleased to welcome to the show judge Belinda T Harris, a dear friend who I respect greatly, who's also a survivor. Belinda, good morning.

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Good morning. Good morning. How are you on this morning? I

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am wonderful. I love this time of year. The temperatures start to drop a little bit, although we've been in quite the heat wave for the end of September going into October, but blessed to see another day, been to both parts of the state in the last week. So it's just been really exciting, exhilarating, lots of stuff going on with the political climate, and just grateful as a whole, and grateful to be here another year as a survivor of breast cancer. I've got so many anniversaries that sometimes I don't lose count, but I have to stop and think about the first diagnosis, the second diagnosis, the third diagnosis, and the different milestones. I'm sure you can relate.

Unknown Speaker 2:14
Yes, I can relate. But I will also say, you know, each day that we wake up licensed for the living and having battling such disease, if we didn't know anything or learn anything from it, we are grateful to have the opportunity to still be here. And every day is worth living. And so every day that we wake up and we're able to really strive and live in our purpose and do things of this nature where we are given information and educating and being very candid about our experience and our journey. I count those all as mouthful as well.

Unknown Speaker 2:50
Absolutely, I think we both. I've heard bits and pieces of your story, and that's why I'm excited to welcome you on the show to talk about it, because I've taken different pieces and segments and let me first qualify. We're both African American women who were diagnosed with breast cancer at different times. I was first diagnosed at 32 I think you were in your 30s as well. That

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is correct. I definitely was in my 30s. I was 36 years old.

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What kind I can't

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it was, it was positive, hormone positive, er, PR positive, if there is such term as the most common kind, unfortunately, we say that because after the diagnosis, I feel like they have the most information about and the most regiment plan. But I was diagnosed. I was 36 years old, and I did the full gamut of recommendations and or, you know, treatment. So I had a double mastectomy in January of 20, 2017, I was only diagnosed on my right side. However, I chose to remove both of my breasts at the time, so I had a double mastectomy. I immediately got the tissue expanders in which, you know, the tissue expanders help stretch your skin back so they can put implants or your own fat, or whatever it is that you would like to place there if you choose to do that, and I was choosing to get implant, so I immediately went into my tissue expanders. I did seven rounds of chemotherapy and something ridiculous, like 4445 rounds of radiation. After I did that, I was on the quote, unquote, oral chemo pill, and I have been on that recently for the last seven years, five and a half, well, I'm going to say six and a half, seven years, however, it is starting to have some Abbott adverse effects on me, so I am speaking to my doctor and winging off of that.

Unknown Speaker 5:01
Yeah, wow, I didn't realize you were well, similarly, I was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in site two, which is kind of in the same vein of relatively common. And I was also a positive diagnosis. So for those who don't understand, let us clarify that bit. There's triple negative and triple positive breast cancer most commonly. And later in the month, I'm going to welcome on a doctor from comprehensive cancer centers of Nevada to talk about the medical components of this and unpack that for you, so that after we share some testimonials about breast cancer, surviving what the journey is like, we also also give you medical information to help you understand it from a scientific standpoint of what's proven and what an expert is able to tell us, because it's constantly evolving. They're doing studies or doing research. They're finding out new information. So to the point of Belinda and I triple positive, taxile terror, hercept carboplatin, herception, Herceptin. So you'll hear this tch in certain circles, or maybe your mom or an aunt or sister or friend or someone is is on this journey now, or has been on and then you were wanting to understand, oftentimes, with black women, they're diagnosed triple negative, which means the basic medications that have been developed to treat breast cancer are not guaranteed to work, and when you're triple positive, they are more in line to work for you, the studies have proven that you have a type of breast cancer that will respond to this medical treatment, and they will be able to attack it, slow it, stop it, shut it down, reverse it, stall it, whatever you want to say, Put you hear, women are in recession, so it helps to basically treat them and give them a new lease if you want more time. And what that means is it's like you have these cells, and there's receptors on the outside of your cells, and the receptors respond to the medication, and then the medication attaches and then shuts down the cancer growth in your body. Berlinda, would you say that's a reasonable explanation of how a triple positive cancer responds to the medical treatment?

Unknown Speaker 7:19
Yes, I will say that. And like I said, I don't like to use the word common to describe it, but I feel like that is the one where majority of the work and studies and information has been provided, and therefore there are more options in, you know, with being treated and having different treatment, right?

Unknown Speaker 7:38
And so triple positive breast cancer is one that has been more successfully studied. We need to see more successful studies in the space of triple negative because black women are more routinely diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, but as black women, we have to be willing to participate in the studies so that doctors scientists can find more solutions to breast cancer affecting women of color than they currently have today, I was a stage zero initial diagnosis, meaning my cancer was cell was contained to a milk dug and so I initially had a lumpectomy, where they went in and they removed cells from the area diagnosed for the cancer existed and worked to get what you call clear margins. I recently talked to a woman who had three subsequent surgeries because they weren't able to get clear margins, and I think in the end, she ended up doing a mastectomy on one side. You talked about your experience. I mean, you, you, you've gone through quite the journey. And you, you summed it up. So what were you thinking? I guess it's kind of what I always wonder when a person is because we feel crazy, and initially, when you get diagnosed, you don't always have a conversation, and as time passes, you choose to become an advocate, sometimes in this space, to help other people cope with their diagnosis. But at 36 What were you doing in your life when you found out I was 32 you were 36 What were you doing when you found out you had breast cancer? Mean,

Unknown Speaker 9:17
so I was I was actually a trial attorney. I was actually a public defender. And for people who don't know, public defenders are government attorneys that are appointed to people who are accused of a crime who cannot hire their own attorney. And I was a trial attorney, so I was in and out of court on a daily basis, preparing for trials in and out of institutions, jails, prisons. I was working day in and day out, and so when I got my diagnosis, I wasn't able to keep it quiet because of the type of work that I do. And you know, people are looking for me, and they my role is one. And that we learned in 2020, was essential, and so people are looking for me, and I have to be certain places, and judges are calling, and clients need their representation. So when I first got diagnosed, I did actually feel crazy, because I was like, I just, you know, I was a social drinker. I drank my wine. I my wine for the record, but, you know, I didn't. I did not. Was not a red eat meter. I didn't eat red meat. I didn't eat pork. I ate pretty clean. I worked out and so, and there was no history of it in my family. So I was a tad bit of flabbergasted. I just was like, How was this happening,

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right, right?

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How's this possible? How's this happening? But as I thought about it, as I thought about it, and I prayed, I realized that I had not been living life, that I had pretty much been going through the motions, right? I, you know, you get content with your daily routine, and sometimes, some of us know we should be doing more and have a bigger purpose, and we don't do that. And Lou, when I was yeah, when I was praying, yeah, you know,

Unknown Speaker 11:18
I get that because I'm gonna insert this because I remember when I got my first it might have been the first diagnosis. I was 32 I was working for the county and the county commission space with one of the elected officials, and I remember sitting in my office at the corner of MLK and Carrie at the Clark County Resource Center, and Pastor Fowler, Robert Fowler, came to see me because I shared with him that I had the diagnosis. And I remember him sitting across from my desk in my office and saying to me, what do you think God is trying to tell you? And I was like, I was like the dog who hears the whistle and your ear, you know, your head turns and your ears perk up, and you're like and I had never and before he said that to me, never thought of it in this context, right? And he says, What do you think God is trying to tell you? And it just sat with me, and it resonated. And I'm sitting there pondering it, going, I don't know what you Where are you going with this? Like, like, I wasn't a baby Christian, but I was like, maybe in junior high, right? So I'm like, okay, Pastor, where were we going with like, I don't know. And he says to me, you need to meditate on that. You need to think about that. Because what do you think God is trying to tell you? And I was sitting there like, and I want to say it was the first one. I don't think it was the second diagnosis. Nope, I'm pretty it might have been even number two, but I'm pretty sure it was number one when he said it to me, because I still work for the same person. The second time I was diagnosed at 37 it was yes, but either way, in one of those spaces, he said that to me, yes.

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And so that was when I prayed that was revealed to me through my own prayers. And so my prayer was, I did not ask God to heal me. I just told him to make me able to live and function, whatever that looks like, right, whether it's me on medication, whether it's me, yeah, whether it's me on medication, whether it's me, you know, whatever that looks like to be able to live. I told him that I would begin to live in my purpose in full capacity. And so when I, you know, I told, Well, of course, he knows all. But I told, God, like I'm going life is for the living, and I'm going to start living, and I will be living in my purpose and in my full capacity, and making sure that the the tools and the skill sets that have been bestowed upon me, I'm actually using them for the good and for people, because I know that's what It is. I know that's what it was. So after that, after I did that, my legal community, which was super impressive, because a lot of times, shout out to all the legal community, but a lot of times lawyers are really oblivious, because they are so entrenched in their own what they got going on, whether it's their case, their file argument with this judge and or their family life that they really can't get out and do a little bit more with their skill set or pay attention to all of that. So I was very, very pleased. East, when my legal community one of the main, two main people, Steve Yeager and beta Yeager, they brought me a vitamixer, and they begin to show me how to juice and what vegetables, and just the plethora of the learning that I got from having such diagnosis, and also some of the relationships. So I think that the experience, while it was very, very hard, and God, I know you hear me, I don't need to go through it again. I'm very grateful for such opportunity, because it really taught me a lot about myself. It taught me a lot about people. It opened up my eyes to a completely different world that I didn't know was present, and it really pushed me to live to my full capacity, and for that, I am forever grateful.

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I love that and what I love about it, and congratulations to you on being a survivor. Let me say that because,

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thank you. Thank

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you. You're welcome. Because that's a big it's not something to take for granted. It's not just, oh, I survived my cancer, and here I am. It's, it reminds me of one of because there's different moments in this journey. My journey is like 20 years going right, and so there was a time when I was going through one of the reconstructive surgeries, and it wasn't going well, and I was, oh, woe is me. You know, I had done a skin graft to do part of a breast reconstruction, part of the breath reconstruction surgery, because I too had took off all of the tissue. I was a right side diagnosis. And so at one point in the third one, I took the tissue and they had to do the reconstruction. And there was a skin graft to help do a portion of it. When you reconstruct the nipple and it the skin graft area, there was a hole and it would not heal. And I remember just Whoa. I was in this really, like, kind of not dark, but it was dark, I guess it Woe is me. But what came to me had an epiphany one day when I was staring at another surgery, and the doctor says it's going to take six or seven, seven weeks for this give it another seven weeks for this space to heal on your body. I had already been off a number of weeks, and I didn't have seven weeks. And I remember coming home, and it was seven days to the surgery to correct the problem, and everything was just a series of sevens. And I looked up at the sky, the clouds, the mountains, the birds, the trees, the sun everything. And I thought, well, he created the whole world in seven days. Well, clearly you can, clearly you can fix my leg in seven days. And Belinda, it was like the light bulb snapped on, and it wasn't what I was going through. It was how I was responding to my circumstance. And that is what I'm taking from what you're saying. It's not sometimes what we're going through, it's how we're responding to what we're going through. And

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that's that's so true, because the old people always say, right? And you never know what, until it's really you that is mine over matter, right? And it is one of those things where it is the mind can really control the matter, because, you know, I just told the first part of my journey, but recently, within the last 24 months, one of my I had a lot of scar tissue on one side where I had the Radiation and an implant. The scar tissue began to press against the implant, which caused me to have some kind of crazy infection that I did not know that I had. I just thought I was very tired from the life that I live, and I ended up in the hospital impromptu at the beginning of 2023 for two weeks, and I had to get my right implant removed. And so I was in the hospital on IV medication, not hoping. You know, the doctor was like, I can't believe this. You almost went septic. I had to get my right implant removed at that time, here we go, right. What was me? I was like, I'm done with this right. Like, no more surgeries. I got a prosthetic breast my left. My left implant was still good. I got a prosthetic breast for the right side. Then my chest began to cave in. And being a young woman, I did not want my I mean, even if I was a woman, I think I did not want my chest to be caved in in that manner, because it was so um, my chest was caved in so much, although I even when I would wear my prosthetic, it made my body, yes, and it was obvious and and people. Did not know. But, you know, people are like, are you pregnant? Uh, are you why are you getting so much weight? You know, just, you know, being who they are talking to me as they normally would, and I'm thinking to myself, Well, no, I'm not. But because my chest is so caved in, it makes my whole torso, you know, disproportionate, makes me look a little weird. Yeah and so, yeah and so, I decided to have a what they call a deep slap, where they take your tissue and skin and literally, the blood vessels from your stomach, and connect it up to your breast, so your breasts are now made out of your own tissue and your own skin. So at the beginning of this year, I had a 13 a 12 hour surgery, um, where my doctor cut open my stomach, took the tissue in the skin and connected each one of those. And I have very, very tiny veins. My veins are very non cooperative when it comes to being stuck and things of that nature. And he had to connect my veins up there to my chest, and I took the left implant out. And so I had to, I got that done at the beginning of the year. I'm very pleased, but it was a journey. I had a total of six drains when I came out of the hospital. Like, yes, I was off of work for six weeks. I had to, I had to order a pillow system to set the pillow system up on my couch so I could be able to sleep. Um, you know, I had to do, as they call it, the grandma walk, I had to walk with a walker, with my back hunched over to make sure that my stomach was healing appropriately. Right after the surgery, I slept in a hyperbaric heat chamber to make sure that my tissues and my skin stayed warm and the blood vessels were pumping the way they were supposed to be. This all just happened this year. Girl,

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girl, look, I don't want Wait. Let me put it down and just come back and go. Girl, because. Girl, let me just Whoo, Lord heaven. Because people don't you know they see you and they see you on the other side, and you have no idea what a person has endured in a breast cancer journey to still look like that life is good, correct, and God is good, but you have no all the time. But you have no idea what a person has endured to still, to look like they look when you see them. I've had people say to me, and I can't even fathom it when they say it, but they say to me, girl, if I had gone through what you've gone through, I think I would be in the fetal position somewhere, just curled up in a ball, I would have never been able to do what you've done. You don't know what you can do until you find yourself in the space having to do it, but as I swear, you unpack, and I owe you a cake. Girl You Know About to go home and take this butter out now, like, wait a minute, you and as you're talking, I'm going you owe Belinda a cake. And let me just go home and take this butter out and put it in a bowl and let it become room temperature and bake you and cake, because I owe you a cake and you're gonna get this cake at this point. I'm like, I don't care what I have going on. Let me make this child her cake, and she can share it with whomever she wants and eat it whenever she feels like it. Don't take too long, because it won't have any preservatives, but it's to the point of, I I'm just that is a lot, and I know what you did, because I had, because I had to have an emergency surgery in one of mine because the sutures didn't hold, and the suture pursed, and the doctor had to rush me back, had to Put me back in, and you can barely move. I understand, because in 2022 I think I decided that my mind were not looking level anymore. And I was like, This is crazy. One is here, one is there. So I had them go in and redo it. And they took everything detached, the nipple re attached, like, and you see these sutures, and you're sitting there like, Oh, let me barely move between the drains hanging and the stitches. Let me be very still for as long as I need to be so that this doesn't pull apart and I don't find myself with an infection. So all the septic all these things, there's so many things that go into this journey, but what you just unpacked, I didn't even girl, Oh,

Unknown Speaker 24:45
wow. And listen, I have one more small procedure, outpatient. It's funny when you start saying because you're going to be under for less than three hours. It's a small procedure, the switching of the mind frame. Where I'm going to get a little more fat put in one to try to make them look even hopefully it takes, because this is the last hurrah. So I feel like even as a survivor, once you get such diagnosis, diagnosis, it's always there. Yes, can happen with your body that trigger it or, you know, I don't I'm No, I don't know any longer have any active cancer cells. I'm cancer free, but what I've been going through the last 24 months is a direct result

Unknown Speaker 25:36
of being a breast cancer patient. So it's like a component of breast cancer is intruding upon your life in a way that's very real, and it's changed everything about how you're living perspective. But to that point every day, let me tell you people to that point, this girl, this woman, is a fighter, and she fights tirelessly with the greatest of energy for this community, for people every day in a justice space, to have equity fairness, to be seen and to be heard in a courtroom, to not be marginalized, to be respected, for families to have a space where there is a sounding board and someone is really listening and paying attention, and I want to say to that work, thank you. You. Recently, I was privileged to be at the ACLU dinner and see you receive an award for your hard work, and you came up on stage, and everybody in the room was in her party, was wearing white. There was a method to the madness. And you saw these people, these young people, wearing white. And I just want to say thank you for taking the baton that you have taken from people like me and people older than me who came before you, who run the race to a point, and I realize I still have portion of my own lane, but they run the race to the point your energy level is still different than my energy level. So I want to say to you thank you for taking the baton with your team and running the leg of the race that you're running right now that makes a difference in the community, in spite of everything that you're going through and have gone through as a breast cancer survivor.

Unknown Speaker 27:19
Well, thank you so much. I truly appreciate that. And you know, I want to say, touche, my sister. Touche, thank you. You know this race is not for the faint heart and having the love and support and the ability to call on those who came before me and who are still there and very active, such as yourself, has also been, you know, a mechanism which has just allowed me to continue on the fight and continue on the journey. You know, most people are not privy and don't have this level of privilege that has bestowed upon me right to be on your show, and in the midst of your show, you're going to go home and bake me a cake. You know that that that's a level of privilege that most don't have, and so I'm beyond grateful that I have that privilege, and I don't take it lightly either. Well,

Unknown Speaker 28:16
I love you and I love you too, in case anyone just want we're getting to the end of the show. We only have about a minute or so left, probably a little bit less than that, honestly. But if anyone wants to get to know you, better follow you. Is there any social media spaces that they can get to know? My

Unknown Speaker 28:34
name is Belinda T Harris, and my social media is all Belinda T Harris, um, everything about me is literally my name. I am not hiding and nor am I hard to find. What's that? Harris, and what does that? Bth, the bold, tough and honest one. Um, it also stands for a few few other things, but that's what we rolling with. Bth, the bold, tough and honest one. Belinda T Harris, my social media, all of that is there. So thank you all so much. And thank you for having me on the show. Thank

Unknown Speaker 29:07
you for spending some time with me this morning. I am grateful. I appreciate it. I will say, I will let you know when the cake is ready. Uh, can I have a slice of the cake when I finish it? I mean, I'm not a sure cake, but can you sit down and have some cake with me? Absolutely. Thank you for spending some time this morning. Have an awesome way. Thank you. You

Unknown Speaker 29:25
as well. Bye bye,

Unknown Speaker 29:26
bye bye. I want to thank you for tuning in to the scoop with me. Tonya Flanagan and I want to invite you to get social with me. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle, T, a n, y, A F, l, a n, a G, A N. You can also find me on Instagram at Tanya almond eyes Flanagan, and if you have a thought, an 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. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai