When Elaine McDonald first noticed pain in her right breast in November of 2020, she wasn’t concerned. After 20 years working in diagnostic imaging at Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers (RMCC), her understanding of breast cancer was that it rarely caused pain. However, this was the first of many new lessons about cancer she would learn, including how to make cancer treatment decisions and what it’s like to be a cancer patient.
“What I thought I knew about cancer, I didn’t know,” Elaine said almost a year after she was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, a type of breast cancer. “It’s true, we healthcare professionals are the worst patients. You would give different advice to a friend than you follow yourself.”
Learn more about the symptoms of breast cancer.
But Elaine was fortunate and feels grateful: her cancer was discovered when it was still small (about a centimeter) and had clear margins. This means it hadn’t metastasized and didn’t involve the lymph nodes. So, she was able to treat it through a lumpectomy, a short-term radiation treatment administered over one week and seven chemotherapy treatments.
The goal of the chemo, Elaine explained, “was not to cure anything but more of an investment to prevent recurrence. People would try to encourage me to ‘fight the cancer,’ and I’d say ‘I’m not fighting anything right now. I’m just protecting my future.’”
Despite Elaine’s numerous personal and professional connections in cancer care, she rarely sought advice from others when faced with decision-making. The only people whose opinions she sought were her two adult children. Instead, she said she had to dig deep inside and learn how to make cancer treatment decisions that were right for her.
“You actually have a lot of choices in cancer treatment,” Elaine said. “You’re not forced into anything. In fact, you have so many choices, it’s kind of overwhelming.”
Thus, Elaine developed a process – that was part soul-searching and part rational evaluation – to guide her through making cancer treatment decisions. It’s an insightful, four-part evaluation that helped her identify the decisions that were right for her.
For every decision – from the schedule of treatments to choosing between a lumpectomy or complete mastectomy – Elaine considered five questions:
Elaine had started working as a PET technologist at RMCC nearly 20 years ago. And, as the department grew – from one location to eight locations, plus a mobile unit – her responsibilities grew, as well. In 2005, she became the director of imaging. After 13 years in the position, she requested to return to a position providing more hands-on patient services and less administrative duties.
Initially, when Elaine began her cancer treatment, she intended to continue working. But her stamina was so reduced and the unpredictability of whether or not she’d feel too sick to work after chemo treatments eventually led her to take a leave of absence.
“Certainly, my professional background helped me prepare mentally (to understand diagnosis and treatment),” Elaine said. “At the same time, I learned how much I didn’t know.”
In the winter of 2021, Elaine retired completely from work. While her tests have shown the treatments were effective at ridding her body of cancer and her care team is optimistic that it won’t return, the toll chemo took on her body will take some time to recover from.
“The experience changed me,” Elaine said. “I hope to be there for others in some way. I don’t know what that is yet, but maybe it will find me.”
It can seem overwhelming to know how to make cancer treatment decisions. Learn more about the array of educational events, peer support groups, and collaboration with the national non-profit Cancer Support Community that RMCC offers to help patients find a path that is right for them.