Dorothy: [00:00:00] Don’t worry, you don’t have breast cancer. These were the words that this woman heard when she was only 36 years old. She’d just had a baby. She’d just finished breastfeeding and her doctor said, don’t worry, you don’t have breast cancer. And unfortunately she did. Hers is a story we still hear today. Young women who are dismissed simply because they’re young, and Trish Hayes has a lot to say about that. But most of all, she has a long time of being a survivor, simply because she took her health in her own hands.
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Let’s Talk About Your Breast, a different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose. A [00:01:00] breast center of excellence and a Texas treasure. You’re gonna hear frank discussions about tough topics and you’re gonna learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
Trish, thank you so much for being with us today. I’m, I am just honored to be with someone who was diagnosed so many years ago and is here vibrant working. All of the things that you are right now, but appreciate you making this trip and being with us today.
Trish: Well, thank you. I’m honored to be here and what a wonderful organization you have created and, and such a, a gem for Texas. Really such an important place.
Dorothy: Thank you. Thank you. Now I want you to tell us first about what it is that you’re doing now at The Joy School.
Trish: Well, I’m at The Joy School. I’m on the board of trustees, and that is sort of how I got to you today. I think through, uh, Shannon, who of course, uh, is the director of Development here at The [00:02:00] Rose. But, uh, Shannon and I are both on the board of trustees. It’s my seventh year on the board, uh, my third year as board chair. And for those, uh, who don’t know, The Joy School is a K through eight private school here in Houston for kids with learning differences. And really the mission of the school is to help kids reach their academic potential in a really supportive environment. It’s very small classes, uh, very, uh, specific in, individualized learning plans. Uh, my son went there years ago, first through third grade. He’s now 25, and Shannon’s daughter went through, uh, more recently. So we’re both very passionate about the school and, and know that it’s an important place for Houston as well.
Dorothy: Oh, it does such good work. And my son, uh, had dyslexia and there was nothing like that around nothing. I mean, we, we struggled through years not understanding what was wrong. You know, and I just look back and think, Hmm, [00:03:00] what a, what a gift the school is now.
Trish: It really is. And I think part of that gift is the support that it gives to families as well. It’s not just, you know, when a child is struggling, as you know, the whole family is impacted by that.
Dorothy: Yes. So, and it, it was so frustrating for him.
Trish: Yeah.
Dorothy: Of course, now, you know, somehow or another he’s made it through, but,
Trish: Yes, exactly.
Dorothy: You know, our kids are always so resilient. Now I wanna go to, first, how did you get to the United States? You’re, you’re a Canadian?
Trish: Yes. Born and raised in, in Canada. Started my career in Canada and when we were in our late twenties, I guess, my husband was offered a transfer within his own corporation to the corporate headquarters, which was in New Jersey. So we were both working in Toronto. And then moved to New Jersey, um, when we were in our late twenties, and I continued my career, um, worked in advertising in New York City, which was a really kind of [00:04:00] exciting.
Dorothy: Exciting yeah.
Trish: Thing to be doing in your late twenties, early thirties. Yeah. In New York. So, uh, that’s how we ended up in the US and we’ve been here, um, aside from a stint overseas pretty much ever since.
Dorothy: Okay. So now we’ve, we’ve set the stage here. Tell me about when you were diagnosed with breast cancer.
Trish: Sure. I was 36. I had two kids. My daughter was four at the time, and my son was one. Just, basically turned one when I was diagnosed. I found the lump myself, and it took about six months before I was actually given a final diagnosis.
I think I was misdiagnosed, maybe not taken so seriously. I, I think because I was young, I had just finished breastfeeding, so of course there’s a lot of changes in your body when during pregnancy and breastfeeding. And so the first time I think I, I called my doctor immediately when I found the lump, and I believe I saw the [00:05:00] nurse, nurse practitioner first, and she was not concerned at all. She said, you know, it feels very round. You know, it doesn’t seem unusual to me. You’re young, you’ve just finished breastfeeding. It’s, this is just something normal. Don’t worry about it. A couple weeks later, my doctor, my gynecologist, followed up and said, you know, wouldn’t hurt to do a baseline mammogram.
Went and got the mammogram. I wasn’t at a specialist breast center, I was just at an imaging place. And I remember it being very strange ’cause the radiologist showed me, you could very obviously see the, the mass on the screen. And he showed me, but he said, look, it’s, it’s perfectly round. This is just a benign fibroid. You’re young, don’t worry. You don’t have breast cancer. And then I think a few weeks later I was in to see my ob gyn just for a regular appointment. And I said, you know, it is kind of strange. I actually saw the lump on the [00:06:00] screen. And she said, okay, well if it makes you feel better, let’s do a biopsy. I said, great.
Let’s do a biopsy. A couple weeks after the biopsy, got a call from the radiologist, said, well, I have good news, and then I have kind of. I’m not sure what news and I said, okay. She said, the good news is you don’t have breast cancer. She said, but it came back as normal breast tissue and we know it’s not normal breast tissue.
There’s something there. It should have come back as, you know, some other kind of benign diagnosis. So she said, I think, you know, we should probably just keep an eye. Redo the biopsy in a few months, but don’t worry, you don’t have breast cancer. And at the time, uh, coincident with that, my husband had left his job, uh, his company had been taken over and, uh, he decided to sort of take the package, uh, that was offered [00:07:00] and, and left.
And we were planning a trip with our little itty bitty kids to Spain. We had rented a place in Spain and we were gonna travel. We love to travel, so we took the opportunity of him not working, and again, the radiologist was like, oh, no, no, no, no problem. Like just. You know, when you come back.
Dorothy: Go enjoy.
Trish: Yes.
Dorothy: Go enjoy.
Trish: And, um, by the time I got back, the lump had not only grown, I could see it, you could physically see it. Now, it wasn’t just a matter of feeling it. I could see it every time I changed my clothes.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Trish: Oh, and this time when I went to see my ob gyn, she took one look at me and said, I’ll be right back. She came back and she said, I’ve just talked to a breast surgeon. I would like you to go have your follow up biopsy with her, and she just happens to have an appointment tomorrow afternoon. Do you think you can make it? Still no one mentioned cancer. Uh, [00:08:00] went to see the, the surgeon, she said, you know, I could do the biopsy, but why don’t we just remove it? How about the day after tomorrow? And still, like when I look back, I was so naive still at that point, so many people had said, you don’t have breast cancer. You are young, you don’t have breast cancer. And um, I woke up from that surgery. My husband was beside me, uh, and I could tell he’d been crying and he said the doctor’s on her way in and she delivered the news that. In fact, I did have breast cancer, and that was the start of the journey.
Dorothy: Oh my goodness, Trish, I just want you to know, and the listeners to know you are probably the fifth or sixth woman who sat in that chair with a similar story on that they’ve just been diagnosed.
Trish: Mm.
Dorothy: It makes [00:09:00] me so upset and concerned that so often the young woman is dismissed. And so often it is, well, you were breastfeeding. You know, you just had a baby. Your, your breasts have been through changes, so it, it just, uh, it’s amazing you’re still here. 25 years ago, things were very different. But it is a serious message for every woman listening to this.
I, it, we just have got to understand. Doctors don’t know everything. I understand that part, but boy, young mothers really need to be aware.
Trish: You really need to advocate for yourself. And, uh, we were talking earlier about being Canadian and as Canadians we’re not very pushy. We’re not raised to be pushy people, but you have to, if something doesn’t feel right, just keep questioning it [00:10:00] and um, just make sure you’re, you’re satisfied with the information you’re getting. Um, and I’m, I feel very fortunate that I did that and I was able to keep going with it.
Dorothy: Right. So, but now you’d been reassured over and over. This wasn’t, was there anything in you that said. Mm, did you have any little flashes that said something else was going on or?
Trish: I did. I think I, I, I inherently knew it was strange, and especially after it had been dismissed several times, but I could see it changing.
Dorothy: Mm. That would be the scariest of all. Yes.
Trish: That was, this is, this is really not normal. This isn’t just something from breastfeeding.
Dorothy: So what was your diagnosis at that time?
Trish: So my diagnosis at the time was, um, stage two, um, Ductal carcinoma. It, one of the things I guess [00:11:00] that I would say about myself is I love information and I’m someone who very thoroughly res researches, most things probably to a fault. And at the time I got the diagnosis and the surgeon, you know, I, I kind of came about it in a backward way, right?
I, I essentially had a lumpectomy and found out from that lumpectomy that I had breast cancer. So it was a little bit different than most people come at it. And so she said, I’ll, I’ll connect you with the medical oncologist. There’s a great book called Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.
Dorothy: Oh, I remember that. Yes.
Trish: Yeah. And you remember it. Um, she said, if you wanna get more information, well, I poured over that book. Um, took out as much information I as I could in a short period of time. Um, and I talked to a neighbor who, uh, and told her what was going on, uh, probably the first day that I found out. And she came over the next morning and [00:12:00] handed me a stack of papers and she said. I’ve done some research and these are the five top breast cancer oncologists in our area, you know, go. And so I ended up making appointments with three of them. I, I didn’t just kind of go to the oncologist that the surgeon sent me to, I think, because I wanted to find out more about it. And again, another thing that I’m, I’m sort of glad I did because I, I ended up talking to three different oncologists and getting three different treatment plans.
Dorothy: Oh, that would be so frustrating.
Trish: It was very frustrating. But you know, the first one was a very, you know, well-known cancer center. I walked in and I felt very much like a pathology report. There was sort of less humanity to it, if, if, if that’s the way to say it. They, they really just looked at me. You’re textbook stage two breast cancer. We’ll [00:13:00] try to make, give you a treatment that doesn’t make you lose your hair. And I was like, I don’t care about my hair. I care about seeing my children grow up.
Dorothy: Right?
Trish: So it just didn’t feel right. Second person, much more compassionate and had a different treatment plan. Again, the first one, uh, they weren’t gonna use the first hospital I saw they weren’t gonna use Adriamycin, which I had determined from reading that book was as horrible a drug. Really, really effective in breast cancer.
So I was kind of questioning why they wouldn’t even put that in the, in the mix. And they said, because I would lose my hair. Um, second doctor said, we’re gonna do Adriamycin Cytoxin four rounds, third doctor, and this is sort of where the triple negative comes in, although it wasn’t called that when I went to see him, he said. First thing he said was, you’re young, you’re a mother. You must be [00:14:00] very scared. And our goal here is to make sure that we get rid of this and it never comes back. So you can see your children grow up. And that was like, oh, thank you. Yes, thank you. Yes. Um, his name is Rick, Richard Michelson. He was at, uh, cancer Center of St. Barnabas in New Jersey. And he took me through the pathology and he said, okay, there’s three things I want you to know. You’re estrogen receptor negative. Your progesterone receptor negative, your HER two negative. And what those things mean is that I’ve got less options in my toolkit to fight your cancer.
So even though you’re stage two, he said there’s a couple of things. You’re young, which means yes, you’re healthy and your body can take maybe a little bit more of aggressive of treatment, but also being young means it really is good for cancer growth as well. You know, young cells are a better host for for cancer, and so he said, because of your age, [00:15:00] because of your health, other than this, I would like to treat you more aggressively because our only option given those three things that are negative are these certain chemo drugs. And my husband and I just looked at each other and was like, this is our guy.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Trish: Yeah. So it wasn’t referred to as triple negative. I’d never heard that term until I was living in Houston and I was a patient of, of Dr. Osborne’s at Baylor.
Dorothy: Well, he was one of the first that really understood that pathology, that what was gonna happen. And, uh, did a lot of research. My gosh. Yes. He, he was the gold standard here.
Trish: True. Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. And my, my oncologist in New Jersey referred me to him. You know, I finished my treatment in, in, uh, 2002. So I had four treatments of Adriamycin, cytoxin, and four treatments of Taxol, and then radiation therapy. And I finished the spring of 2002, and then the summer of 2003 we moved to [00:16:00] Houston. And I remember being so scared to leave my oncologist and his team.
Dorothy: Oh.
Trish: You know, I was seeing him every three, uh, months or so at that point, I think. And um, he said, Trish, you can always come back and see me, but you’re moving to Houston, Texas, and they have an amazing medical center there. And, um, this particular particular doctor, Dr. Osborne, I think, um, if you can get in to see him or one of his colleagues, you’ll be in great hands.
Dorothy: Yeah. He was such a pioneer. And he was the first that, and remember I’ve been doing this for 38 years, but he was the first doctor to really talk about the problem with access to care for.
Trish: Yes.
Dorothy: You know, our underserved populations. And he was also the first to call it out and say, we don’t have facilities to take care of this many. Didn’t always rub people the right way because he was such an advocate, he [00:17:00] understood. And I know so many, uh, women who went to him had great bedside manner. Very caring.
Trish: Yeah. He is an amazing human being.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Trish: He’s, he really is. And that’s how I found out about The Rose initially. Um, I was part of an advisory council, ultimately at Baylor for the breast center. And a lot of what we talked about was access to care. And The Rose often came up, um, in those conversations because really it was the only place, um, that, you know, served those women. And a lot of doctors from Baylor worked also across at Ben Taub. So they were seeing women coming in with very late stage disease and a lot of that being access, lack of insurance.
Dorothy: And lack of understanding and knowing.
Trish: And lack of understanding. Yes.
Dorothy: Oh, there. What, uh, concerns me still is that we still have women [00:18:00] coming in with late stage. Very late stage and they’re always uninsured. And in the last eight, nine years now, I think we have not diagnosed a stage four in an insured woman, but we diagnose four to five every year in uninsured women. Now if that doesn’t.
Trish: That’s very telling.
Dorothy: Say it. Yes. It’s, it’s, it’s, it hasn’t changed.
Trish: Yeah.
Dorothy: In a lot of ways. That is what has driven your passion to get involved with all these different pink organizations or raising money for breast cancer?
Trish: Yes. I mean, probably had I not had breast cancer my life would’ve taken a very different path. Obviously, I, I probably would’ve gone back into the corporate world after my kids had gotten to a, a certain age. That was always my plan. Um, once I finished my treatment, [00:19:00] and especially when we moved to Houston, you know, I thought, I’m not gonna worry about that. I’m just going to enjoy being with my children. And luckily I was very, very fortunate that, you know, my husband had a career that allowed me to do that.
Um, but, I definitely wanted to do something else. And, um, interesting story. My very first appointment with Dr. Osborne, the day I met him, uh, it was, uh, I was sitting in the waiting room and there was a, a pile of papers and it said, would you like to volunteer for the 2003 Pink Ribbon House? And I don’t know if you remember the.
Dorothy: Oh, I remember that.
Trish: Griffin House events, remember? Yes, yes, yes. So they were designer showcase homes. That raised money for breast cancer research at Baylor. And I thought, wow, you know, I’m new to Texas and new to Houston, and I don’t really have a community, and this would be a great way to meet people. And the, the house that year was actually in my neighborhood, so it was a very simple thing. I thought, oh, I can, I can spend a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning and do that. And [00:20:00] that’s what I did. And that got me involved really with Baylor. Um. Shortly after I arrived in, in Houston, and then it kind of just went from there. I kept involved with the Pink Ribbon House and, um, eventually was asked to be on the advisory board, uh, for the breast center at Baylor, and really got the opportunity to work with Dr. Osborne and meet a lot of the, the researchers that work with him. And, uh, it was hugely eye-opening and I, I really loved it.
Dorothy: So how many of these events type things have you been in? Or chaired or led part of?
Trish: There was a few, um, I guess probably there was a 2003 pink ribbon house. I just volunteered and I volunteered for the 2004 and 2006. They happened every couple of years after the first one. Um, and I think I was ticket sales chair. And then in 2008. I chaired it. [00:21:00] 2010, I co-chaired it.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Trish: 2012 I chaired the preview party, which is the big opening night, uh, party for the pink ribbon house. And then Baylor kind of pivoted to a new event called Stiletto Strut and, um. I chaired that into 2014 and helped out again with it in 2015. One of the things I loved about that event is we highlighted survivors and, um, I helped with that part. We had a wonderful photographer who donated her time and we wrote kind of little stories about them. Um. Put beautiful black and white photo photographs of them at the event.
And then at the actual event, they were walked down the runway ahead of all the, you know, models that were doing the fashion show. And, um, our mc, who was Dominic Sachse at the time, uh, would kind of talk about their, their journey. And that was really special. I loved that.
Dorothy: Oh yes. Yeah. Oh, it sounds great.
Trish: And I think [00:22:00] the last event I did was, uh, co-chairing the pink tie yellow for Komen in 2016. Then I kind of pivoted and ended up doing stuff with my kids’ school and.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Trish: Back to Joy. So.
Dorothy: So you were actually a community volunteer?
Trish: Yes. I call myself a professional volunteer now.
Dorothy: Oh, that’s, I like, I like that one better. Yes, it is. ’cause it takes a lot of time to do all this.
Trish: Yeah.
Dorothy: But thank goodness for you, uh, you know, so many of our events, all of our events come together because of a volunteer. And it makes such a big difference. There isn’t a nonprofit around that has enough staff to do all this it.
Trish: Right.
Dorothy: You know, you really need that community help.
Trish: And I really knew nothing about the nonprofit world when I started. I, you know, I didn’t know how they operated and um, um, again, a real eye-opener just to see, um, the importance of fundraising and the important. Importance of volunteerism and, and supporting. I mean, these [00:23:00] nonprofits really have to work, um, often at a, with a skeletal staff in order to keep costs down and.
Dorothy: Absolutely.
Trish: And that’s where you need a really strong volunteer community.
Dorothy: So was there ever a time in your life when breast cancer identified you?
Trish: Probably, um, I would say that whole time, you know, that kind of window of 10 years probably post my diagnosis. I was really very focused on breast cancer, um, and I very fortunately, I think I’ve met some of the most wonderful people in that world. Um, so maybe not so much, you know, was my only identity. Obviously I was, I was a mom and, um, but a very important part of, of who I was and the people that are in my life still today [00:24:00] are women that I met through fundraising and, and volunteering.
In fact, we were talking about The Joy School. Next week is their, their annual luncheon event, which is their big fundraiser. And I have a table and 80% of my table are women. Who I met through the breast center at Baylor.
Dorothy: Oh my goodness.
Trish: They have nothing to do with The Joy School, but they’re coming to support. To support me.
Dorothy: Right, right.
Trish: And the school. And we call each other our breast friends.
Dorothy: That is so bad.
Trish: It’s so bad. But yes, yes. Theyre an amazing group of women and. So, you know, without this journey, obviously it was a difficult one, but it has just opened up so many other avenues in my, in my life that wouldn’t have happened had it not happened.
Dorothy: Right. So you touched on it before, but I want you to again tell us why it’s important for us to be bear our own advocates.
Trish: Well, I, I, I think women’s health has come a long way even in the last 25 years, but it’s not perfect. And we [00:25:00] still realize that most of. The funding and research out there is done on men.
Dorothy: Yes.
Trish: And I think it’s important for women to just understand what’s going on with their bodies. I understand that not everyone’s gonna be like me and wanna research everything to death, but just being aware of what’s going on with your body and how important it is to, if something’s not right, speak up and even, um, taking it a step further, even when you get that diagnosis, being comfortable with the people that are looking after you, I think is another huge piece that I learned anyway. I’m very glad that I went to see a few different oncologists and got to speak to different people and see what they said.
Dorothy: Right.
Trish: Because I don’t think I would’ve ended up where I was had I not done that. And I really do believe that Dr. Michelson’s approach at the time was part of the reason I’m still here. Because he really did wanna treat it aggressively and he [00:26:00] did. So, and when I met Dr. Osborne, he said the same thing. He said, if you had been here and my patient, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. So, yeah.
Dorothy: But I think the other lesson, if there are any that we really have, was that you paid attention to your intuition. You know, when it didn’t feel right from the time you had that diagnosis of, oh, it’s nothing. And then you were seeing it to going through the three different doctors and knowing when you’d found the right one. I, I just don’t think we can say enough about our intuition.
Trish: Yes.
Dorothy: And being, being strong enough to follow it. ’cause we all know it gets, uh, what’s the word? Poo-pooed a lot. Yeah. But that’s not the right word.
Trish: Well, it can be, it can kind of be squashed.
Dorothy: Right.
Trish: Yeah. Um, and. In the face of a, you know, a professional, someone who spent their life in, in medicine, if they tell you something, of course the tendency is, [00:27:00] is, is to believe it and why wouldn’t we? But yes, I think our intuition is, is hugely important. And, um, again, that that comfort of feeling like they are addressing what needs to be addressed here? Now having said that, I again realize that I was in a place where I had access, I had insurance. I had the ability to do those things to, to pursue different doctors, to go to different places. And that’s, as you well know with your organization. Not always the case, but.
Dorothy: Not always.
Trish: Um, but the one thing, regardless of where you are in the country and where you live, the one thing you can do is listen to your intuition. Listen, you know, know your body and, and speak up when something’s not right.
Dorothy: Great advice. Thank you so much for being with us today, Trish. I, I’m just fascinated by your story and like I said, someone [00:28:00] with triple negative being diagnosed right now will look at this beautiful woman and say, oh my gosh, it isn’t the end of the world.
Trish: No, no, it isn’t. I mean, um, again, we’ve made so many advancements in, in breast cancer and I know I’m very fortunate and blessed to be here, uh, today, but I, I. Do think that, um, I hope I can provide, uh, some kind of vision of what it can be like, you know, 24, 25 years down the road, it really isn’t, um, the end of the world. And keep the faith and, and take care of yourself.
Dorothy: That’s it. Take care of yourself. Thank you again for being with us today.
Trish: It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Speke Podcasting, and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose.org to learn more about our organization. Subscribe to our podcast. Share episodes with friends and join the conversation on social media using #LetsTalkAboutYourBreasts. We [00:29:00] welcome your feedback and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. And remember, self-care is not selfish. It’s essential.
