The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

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This is a Kun V studios original program.

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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. Good morning Las Vegas, and welcome to another edition of the show. I am so glad that she decided to wake up this wonderful Sunday morning and join me for the last Sunday in October, which, as you know, we've been talking about breast cancer awareness. So I want to say thank you and hope that women out there have gotten their mammograms or scheduled mammograms. Today is very special and dear to me. I am pleased to have in the studio with me, family and friends, because I wanted to have a conversation that I've never actually had, talking with family members and people who were super close to me about what breast cancer was like for them. So as I've shared many times before, I am a three time breast cancer survivor, starting this journey when I was age 32 repeating it at 37 and 38 and really having it span over 20 years, I think I'm in my 21st year anniversary of being a survivor of breast cancer. And so I wanted to have a conversation with my niece, Tasia Flanagan, who's here with me in the studio this morning. Hi, Tasha. Hello. Thank you for being here all the way from Arizona, from sunny Arizona, and also in the studio with me, my best friend of oh my gosh, 33 or five years at this point, I kind of stopped counting. But we met when I was 13. She was 12, also from sunny Arizona to me. Go rock gardener. Good morning,

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good morning. Who

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I affectionately call me co so you may hear me go in and out with that, but I wanted to have a conversation that I've never even had, to talk about how it feels I have a journalism background, and I would see people. I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was 29 and on the road of that journey with her, I would take her to radiation appointments, and I would see people in the waiting rooms waiting for their other family members to finish radiation or chemo or what have you. And at that time, I always felt like there were so many different faces of breast cancer. It wasn't just what the patient was going through. It was how the daughter might be feeling, or a husband, or whomever you were looking at, waiting for that loved one to finish the treatment, how they felt about that space and time in that person's life and in their lives, the lives of their family members and themselves, personally. And I never really asked, gee, how was that for people in my life? And so I wanted to have a conversation about it, because we see it through the lens of the patient, and you feel sorry for the patient, the breast cancer patient. So that is what today's show is about as we close out the month of October. And I thought it might be a good, well rounded approach to a couple testimonials that we've had two other Sundays this month, and then we had Dr Matthew Schwartz on last week, so this week it's family and friends day all about breast cancer to close out the month of October. So with that, ladies, thank you for being willing to be here and have this conversation with me. It was its own emotional journey, and I would not have made it through if it were not for the love and support of both of you and the ability to help me crack some jokes from time to time and just move through two lumpectomies and then a mastectomy. So thank you. So I hope the day is the day, the morning is cool, the day is cool, the conversation is okay. And if we get emotional, that's okay, because it's been something. So with that I was 29 I'll paint the picture. So there I was, 29 I lose my mother to breast cancer, and then my on. My dad's sister, about four years later, to breast cancer. Both of them had metastatic breast cancer that spread to their liver. With my mother also affected her bones. And so when my past after my mom, I thought I should get a baseline mammogram, and I never thought it was going to come up with anything. Yeah, I was 32 they say, start your mammograms at 4032. I'm working for the casinos. I'm doing my thing. I'm amazed at this career path. I'm having a great time. And I remember going thinking baseline mammogram. And I remember it was a Friday evening when the letter finally came back, and I called Tamiko, and I said to me, go. I got a letter, and I read you the letter, and it basically said I needed to find a surgeon. And it was a Friday night at like, 730 or eight o'clock. I had come home, and I went to the mailbox and I told her, and I read this letter to you that said I needed to find a surgeon. That I had some unclear cancer, something was going on. And Saturday morning, I got up and my doorbell rang at like, 10 o'clock in the morning, and I'm like, Oh, is this at my door? And I opened the door, and she had made the five hour drive across the desert, and her comment to me was, it was special. It was I wasn't gonna let you sit here and wait a whole weekend for those results to come, to be able to call somebody about those results. So she came and helped me keep my mind off of what I was facing, and the double whammy of it was the day that I came home and got when I first even started to find out I was going through it, my favorite uncle, tasiah, favorite uncle had had kind of a heart attack, and he was in the hospital having a stint put in, and so I didn't even have time to deal with my own breast cancer. Initially, it was just a lot of family stuff. But Miko, do you remember that? I mean, I wanted to give her some time, yeah, because some tears started well enough, so I needed to buy a little time in this conversation and help us reset, because this is going to be a good conversation, an honest one, but an emotional one. How you felt when I called you and said, Hey, I'm 32 and this crazy letter came. Like, what did you do? Because, like, overnight, you literally put the car together and rolled out.

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I don't think I had time to think about it. I just knew that I didn't want you to have to go through that by yourself, and you were so close, but, yeah, so far away. And so that was the first of many trips that I made to Vegas to support you when you had other illnesses that came up surrounding that and things that happened, it was nothing for me. And mind you, that was a long time ago. So it was inexpensive if I needed to take a flight. The south of us was barely affordable back then, there was like $80 round, right? And so I didn't have time to think about it. I just knew that we had, you know, we met in elementary school, and then became friends by junior high, and we were in high school together. We were roommates in college, and so Tanya has two older brothers, and she didn't have a sister. So I always felt as though Tanya were family to me and a sister. So I know that. I don't know. I really don't know. I just knew I needed to be there to support you, if it was to sit in silence, which we often did a lot, we just played old CDs and our favorite CDs from the 90s and just be in the same space. And so I My recollection is more when you actually had the surgery, and I don't think your dad knew the very first one for them to do the biopsy. He knew. I don't think he knew that I was coming. He I don't think he did. And so when I showed up, I remember him, of course, just looking at me like, Oh, I didn't know you were going to be here. And I would just always said, I'm not going to let my friend go through this by herself, whatever it brought so that's what I recall. Tasha, how

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old were you?

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I had to be about 1617, my first memory, I remember coming down to Vegas for Thanksgiving. I know I was probably sheltered from a lot of the experiences that you were having, because I was still very young, but I remember coming from Phoenix, traveling with my family, grandfather, my uncle, and you were going through radiation and chemo, and you had lost all your hair. Oh, so

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you remember my third one too,

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yeah, trying to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for the family, and it was really warm in the home. And so you had your your wig off at that time, and I remember looking at your head and thinking, this is real, and thinking, you know, is Auntie going to be okay? And of course, this is very emotional for me too, after losing my grandmother, which is Tanya's mom, in 1999 and having my whole childhood growing up around my grandmother, so I was very scared, nervous. Didn't understand everything that was going on with her at the time, but just to physically see her with no hair was like a real shocker to me and sadness. And we got through the Thanksgiving with Auntie Tanya. But that was one of my first memories of, like, Okay, this is real.

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Yeah, I remember you were there totally for that third one, like the first two, I think I sheltered you from them. And so to put in context, I've had Tasia since she was a baby. When I say a baby not talking in diapers, baby, so she's like my You're like my child. And so I did. I sheltered her, because the first time I got diagnosed, Miko talked about my dad. I didn't tell my dad, I had breast cancer. I told him, his brother, my uncle, Uncle Robert, had had a heart attack and needed help. And so I needed him to come over, and I needed him to pack enough clothes for two weeks and come over here and stay and help me take care of Uncle Robert, because he couldn't drive himself around. So my dad got and. Everything packed up, came over here, and Uncle Robert drove, drove over to the house, and my daddy said, I thought you said Uncle Robert couldn't drive. Did I say that? Dad? Let's have dinner. And aunt Lois came over to the house, and so my dad's sister lived here, and my uncle, my dad's brother, and we had dinner, and they went home, I think, I think my aunt LOA estate, and my daddy was looking at me like, well, what's really going on? And I sat him down, and I told him that I had breast cancer and I needed to have surgery, and that I was having surgery like the next day, and he just dropped his head because it was four years after my mom died. So the hardest part for me was telling you guys, what I was dealing with. And I remember it was about the third time that you came over Tasia. And I remember that Thanksgiving, I cooked dinner for like 25 people that year, going through, I think I had just lost my hair on November 14, because it was like three years after, three weeks after I started the breast cancer treatment, the chemotherapy, my oncologist said, you're going to lose your hair, and I remember praying like, y'all know I'm Faith based, praying that I wouldn't lose my hair, but I also knew that my prayer wasn't strong enough to keep my hair on my head. I was strong enough to keep from being sick, because I prayed a simple prayer for protection from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I agreed to be tired. I didn't agree to be nauseated or have any of the other side effects. Ago we came out, I was like, I refused, and I never had them, but I couldn't keep that hair. And the one time that I felt like I looked like a cancer patient was when I sat at the beauty shop and we washed my hair and put conditioner in it, and it just started coming out in the sink and Bridget didn't know what to say, and she shaved my hair off, and I looked in the mirror, and I felt like I looked like a cancer patient. And I think that was the moment it was like, You look like a cancer patient. So I totally can only imagine what it felt like for you to see me in the kitchen trying to cook all this food. When I say I did a meal, yeah, I did Turkey, dressing, all the pies, cakes I made the full I fed 20 people that year, 25 people that year for Thanksgiving. And I remember standing in the kitchen in a circle praying before dinner, and it was just going around that circle of what everybody was grateful for. And I was just grateful to have the opportunity to share that holiday in 2008 with my family because of everything that I was going through. And at that point, it had been the third time, and I remember we did the before and after picture, before I did the mastectomy. And until then, I literally had been, I think, in the space of denial that my body was even had even been changed so much by the breast cancer journey, like I saw what I wanted to see every time I looked in the mirror. I don't know how many women out there listening, if you've ever gone through breast cancer, you your mind, or anything that anyone's gone through that has changed your body or how you appear, you look in the mirror and you kind of see what you want to see. We we probably, you know, we even see what we want to see when we get dressed on any given day. I want to wear this. Oh, that doesn't look so bad. And it wasn't that it looked back as it didn't. It's just it was changing. I remember part of that journey getting ready for that Mikko talked about how many trips she's made. She came over one day, I picked her up from the it was spring break for her. She's in education, and I picked her from the airport, and we went to eat, and I wouldn't eat anything. And she looked at me like, this is a Greek salad. We love Mediterranean food. Why aren't you eating a salad? And I just looked at her, because I don't think you knew where I was at that point, because it was the third one. And she looked at me, and she said, Are you fasting? And I said, Yes, because I had done a mammogram and I had to do an MRI and the mammogram and MRI had to align for my surgeon to decide what the course of treatment was going to be. And I didn't know if I wanted to do a mastectomy or what, but I was praying, because I really didn't want cancer again. And so I was fasting, and we got in the car and went to San Diego for a week, for the week, like the weekend or something, to wait for the results to come back for the

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MRI. And that was not planned. And the ocean and the water and that Earth feeling was comforting for China. So it was not that was not a part of my plan, and it was no question. And we just got in the car and we went, and she just needed to be in a space to where she could commune with God, reflect on the journey that she had already taken and the journey that was ahead of her. But the one thing that has been steadfast for Tanya is her faith. Because I know she's said a couple of times that I'm a breast cancer survivor that I had breast cancer, but from the very beginning, Tanya did not claim it, and I thought to myself, how could you not claim it? What do you mean to myself, what does that mean? What does that look like? How can she say that? But this young lady is a prayer warrior, and she is the type of person. That she could be asleep, and scripture comes to her at night during her sleep, and she will wake up. And so when she said that, I said to myself, I said, Well, I can't claim it either, but I thought like, what type of strength does that take? Because it was unknown from the very beginning, it was unknown when she mentioned her mom had passed four years before. The first time we were young. We were in our 30s. I was blossoming in my career. Tony was blossoming in her career, and we have always had goals for ourselves. It might be every three to five years, whatever, wherever and wherever life would take us, we were up for that ride, and so to have someone to say that she did not claim it, and I'm telling you, it has never been and there, there was another time when she had a biopsy and they saw something, and when we got the results, it wasn't there. And Tanya came to a point when she was close after the third time, and considering whether or not she wanted to have children, and trying to make the decision in terms of what that would look like, because of the Tamoxifen that she had to take, and you couldn't get pregnant for five years, and you're thinking about, Oh, how old am I? You know, having a spouse or not having a spouse? What is it that I should do? And she had made a decision to move forward with the process, but at the end of the day, from less than 24 hours on a Sunday night, I left, and that next morning, she just said that I can't the plans that I had set. I can't go forward with those because I feel that that is something that I am trying to determine what my destiny is, and I'm not releasing it to him to protect me, like she said, from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. And so through this journey and even today, Tanya's faith and her belief in God is been steadfast on her in her heart, in her mind, and everything that she does. Once Tanya was going through the process. She changed her her meal prep, she changed the types of food that she ate. She was doing more homeopathic It was awesome. And what prompted me my mom's eldest sister and her youngest sister, they both had breast cancer. So once Tanya was diagnosed, I've been getting mammograms yearly since my early 30s, and mine is scheduled for November 13, because they have the mobile mammography truck that comes to my job to worry about it. I could just walk out of my office and go to the parking lot and have that done. And so I and I whatever, insurance was not even a concern, because, you know, the different jump hoops that you have to jump through. And I was like, whatever the cost, I don't care. I'm having it done every year, because it prompted me to do more frequent breast exams while I was in the shower, all of those things. And it helped me as an individual, in terms of the things that I was ingesting and putting into my body, to realize, hey, I really don't need that. I mean as simple as refined sugar, yeah, anymore simple things. So I know that, as we mentioned coming in earlier, earlier in the conversation about how often I would visit, I do want to share, though, as we did, both of us progressed in our career, and Tonya had her third reoccurrence. I do want to acknowledge the support system that she had here in Vegas, because I didn't really spend a lot of time with you when you were going through your chemotherapy, because by that time I had become a school principal and and I started my doctorate program, it was a lot that was going on. So I want to acknowledge those ladies that were there with you in my place when I couldn't be there. So I know that she has lived in Vegas for a long time. So she has some other friends that I have to share her with. But I wanted to acknowledge those, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that were there for her when she was going through that. So

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I have to say and then I want to talk about something that I remember going through with Tay I could never have made it without the family that I have here, the extended family here in Las Vegas. I mean, humongous kudos. It's just so many people, but a couple in particular that I just want to say mentioned Wendy Welch, because Wendy took Wendy had not known me that long. We had met maybe, like, two or three years before I got diagnosed, Wendy took me to every one of my chemotherapy appointments, like every one, and it allowed you all not to have to travel back and forth so much, because I did that for my mom the back every two weeks I was on the plane trying to go to Phoenix with my mom and to take up my mom and my dad to help Asia with homework, to walk the dog, to buy groceries. It got to point where I can remember if my house had the item, or if my mom and dad's house had the item. Because I was just gone so much, I'd look in the pantry and, oh, you bought that in Phoenix for your mom and your dad. So I didn't have that. So I would just do something else, to cook, whatever, but doing homework with Asia, but Wendy, what? Coach every chemo appointment. Eric James, people might not realize how some people know how close we are, but Eric James was always just that dear friend. I remember when my I came back from being home with you, Tay and Tamiko, and I decided I was coming out of the wig. It was like April of 2009 because I started chemo in October 2008 so, oh, wow, the anniversary month, because it's October, and I start, I had to start chemotherapy by the end of October that year. They had taken the did the surgery in my late July, August, and I had, I had 90 days, or something like that, that I had to start chemo within that time frame. But Eric and Wendy, while we're super good friends, there was one moment when I tried to have a surgery and not tell my dad, because he had become very afraid of all of the constant procedures that had to happen. And so Tasha came to take care of me, and oh, we had a time. Oh, we had a time y'all. She was trying to make food. She was trying to get it right. We were trying to come up anesthesia. We were back home, and I remember I was driving my baby crazy, driving and I didn't have kids to meet girls point, but Tasha has always been like my daughter. It was like, I showed her picture, showed her picture to someone in the office the other day, before you came to be here this morning, and they looked at your picture and said, Wait, that's not just you like, isn't that you like? Maybe 10 years ago? And I was like, No, that's my niece. And they're like, oh my gosh, she looks just like you. And when you were little, people would say to me, thought maybe I had you when I was really, really young, and I was just hiding the truth, and I didn't confess that I had a child, and my parents were trying to cover up my indiscretion. It was funny. My good friend, Mark McGuire, who lives in Long Beach, is like, you sure that's not your child. You're just trying to hide it because you were like, Young. Tasha was born when I was 15. I was like, No, she's my brother's daughter. My mom just has super strong jeans, and everybody looks like my mom a little bit. So everybody looked Tasia, and all my nieces look alike. We all look like my mother, but you came out and tried to take care of me through one of my surgeries. And y'all, let me tell you, I was trying to hide the surgery from my daddy. I was gonna be grown. He didn't want me to have surgery. He was complaining. Tasha came, I think, day number two of this at home, and we could not find anything for me to eat. We could not get it together. And my dad was suffering from mastoid itis, which is like a pocket of fluid filling up behind his right ear, so he couldn't move his jaw very well. And I was sending him back and forth specialist with my brother, and he was couldn't eat, so he was losing weight. And I remember saying, call my daddy. And we called my dad. I said, Dad, how's that Mastoiditis doing? Daddy's good. Daddy feels fine. Daddy's Okay. Well, great, because I need you to pack a car of clothes, and I need you to get on the road, and I need you to come to Vegas for what? Well, I had surgery, and I didn't tell you, and Tasia is here, and I'm driving her crazy. She can't find anything for me to eat, and I need you to come over here and cook some food so I can eat, because I don't feel good. You have what? Just packed the car, dad, I'd be there tomorrow, and Sydney sales, another really good friend of mine would say you could cough the wrong way, and your daddy get in the car Absolutely. But to have.

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I want to actually pause for a minute. I want to actually share my experience with that time. I was a young woman in my early 20s, and I've always adored my auntie, and we are thick as thieves to this day, and so when I had the opportunity to come out and to provide some support, that's exactly what I did, and that's where I come from, that's what we do. And it was very challenging because me being a young woman and not understanding what someone that is going through cancer or the reconstruction process, the sensitivity of what they are able to eat, anesthesia and how to move and how to maneuver, it was challenging, but in my mind, all I wanted to do was be there to support her. So when we did have to break down and call my grandfather, and he was not happy with the both of us. But you know, granddaddy is just one of those type of people, and we always say they don't make them like him anymore, but he's always gonna be there for his children and his grandchildren. And he jumped right on the road and came there, and, you know, he knew exactly what to do, you know, and it was just the comfort of granddaddy being there, her other parent, and being supportive. So I remember us sitting in the bed, and I remember me trying to prepare different things and, and I remember us just having conversations and and the pain that you were going through, the dripping, the drainage that you had on the side of your breast. And all of those memories are very profound. So I'm really happy that we are on this side of the the train tracks. And yeah, that's what I remember. I. It's

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just, I look back over it and I'm like, oh, Mika, I remember one. Did you come to the New Year's Eve party? I had chemotherapy on New Year's Eve one year, so I had a pre New Year's Eve party at my house, and all the YPS came. My dad was here, Wendy, Uncle Robert, and we had a pre New Year's Eve part. It's just like, you look back over, I think, breast cancer, and you have to look at the different memories. I remember Tasia and I said making pizza, just doing all kinds of stuff to get through it. Me going on, amazing chocolate chip cookies. She made me watch Friday or next Friday, because I had never so my black card was about to get revoked. Jay was like, how have you not seen Friday or next Friday? I was like, I don't watch my black exploitation film. And she was like, Look, Tanya, look, what's coming on,

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okay? And I'm quoting movie lines, and she's just looking at me like, what? I was like, oh, no, we got to get

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you. All I knew was, I don't know there's some line I know. I forget which line I know.

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Was it by Felicia? No, it probably was. No,

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it's the other one. That's so anyways, I am. My black car was about to give revoked because I had not seen that. I mean, basically you guys, I hope what you get from this is you get through it with love and support and shenanigans. My mom tried to shelter me from her cancer because I found out about it when I was really 22 in college, 20 something in college, and she was having a surgery that she said was a test, and it turned out to be a lumpectomy, and no one told my brothers and I, and I remember thinking that none of the explanations of it made any sense. So I came home from Tucson. I was at University of Arizona, and I went to that hospital, and when the doctor came out from doing my mom's surgery, a whole bunch of friends were there, which didn't make any sense to me either. It's like something, right? And he said, I think we got it all. And the wave of relief that washed over everybody's face, I remember Colin, Shonda, my oldest friend in life, who was there when I was born. And she was like, Well, they didn't want you to worry, but I thought, What if something had happened to my mom in that surgery? Tony and Darren, my brothers were not there to say anything, any goodbyes, and I stayed home for a week and took care of my mom. And it's just such a journey. What you go through as the clock is slowly ticking out on us. But I hope what we've shared with you is that we've laughed, we've cried. They have supported me. We have gotten through it together as family, as friends. I love you both. Thank you for all the experiences in life, breast cancer related and beyond. Blessed to see me go get her doctorate, Tasia, get your Masters. My niece have her son. AJ, is 11. He's born seven days after my birthday. So every year he steals my birthday. But I love you. Mikko, get married two years ago we were in Maui. It is about being here to share the memories and have the time. So thank you for joining me this morning, and my friends for this conversation, I hope we've shared something that you can use, that helps you know that people are surrounding you. They love you, and they will help you get through whatever journey it is, and while you're going through something difficult, remember to smile, to let the sun shine on you and to cherish the moments that help you form the memories that will remind you later that it was all worth it. You can do it. You are strong enough. You are built tough. Have a great day, a wonderful week, and just continue to enjoy life and your loved ones. Thank you for tuning in. We'll talk to you next week, right here on 91.5 jazz and more, K, U, n, b, radio. 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 tonya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in. Stay safe and have a great week. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai