Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/179241
The turning point came after Grundahl continued to feel unwell after her mastectomy. Though she had anticipated returning to work quickly at JG Development, which she and her husband own, she realized the healing process was going to take time. At the urging of a friend, she set up a profile on Caring Bridge, a website designed to connect patients with their support network during medical crises. Grundahl says she was amazed at the number of family and friends who then offered support. "Don't deny them the chance to help you through this. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes your network to get through this," she says. "Take a helping hand when it's offered." Ward decided to seek out that helping hand after she realized the pamphlets from her doctor didn't seem to accurately describe her thoughts and feelings. "I wasn't fearful, I wasn't hopeless," she says. "But I was sitting on the couch one day, reading the information, and I just started bawling." Fortunately Ward was able to talk to her grandmother about her own experiences with breast cancer, which she says helped. About a year later, one of her clinicians at Mercy Hospital in Janesville recommended Ward connect with After Breast Cancer Diagnosis (ABCD), a national program that carefully matches similar women together in pairs to share their experiences. Ward, who currently works for the UW-Madison political science department, also decided to pursue a patient advocacy certificate at the UW-Madison Center for Patient Partnerships. "I don't know what tomorrow holds for that," she says, "but I feel spiritually drawn into this avenue, to reach out to other women, other families who have been touched by this experience." In her role as a mentor with ABCD, which has a branch in Milwaukee that helps women across the state, Ward is already helping others grapple with the uncertainty and unexpected aspects of their breast cancer. "I think it's valuable [to talk with other survivors]," she says, "because even though no one's journey is exactly like another's, most people don't have any experience with cancer until their diagnosis." o pe ple st mo " s, e r ' o s is . n oth an diag e lik e ir t ly t i l t h ac ex er un y i s an c ne c r th ou 's j e wi e on ienc no er gh exp u However, body tissue reconstruction is ho ny still a relatively new technique, and it's not n t ve a e for everyone. Women who are fairly thin " Ev ' t h a won't have enough tissue available to form n new breasts, and most patients will still do New Advances in Breast Reconstruction In addition to legislation to improve access to breast reconstruction, the surgical techniques and materials used for breast reconstruction have come a long way in the past decade. Some women now have the option of using their own body tissue, usually taken from the abdomen, to build new breasts. This approach, which Drs. Afifi, Poore and Wilke have been performing on patients at UW Hospital, has its benefits. A woman can wake up after surgery with breasts, rather than finding them totally gone. Using the patient's own body tissue also means the breasts will age more naturally. The procedure also reduces the risk of infections from plastic and eliminates the need to periodically replace implants, which should be done, on average, every 10 years. need to undergo additional procedures to refine the breasts, Wilke says. The vast majority of women undergoing breast reconstruction today still receive implants. "They are still the simplest, fastest and least invasive," says Afifi. And plenty of innovation is happening in the realm of implants, too. For example, doctors are beginning to use implants made of materials derived from human skin. Implants also are available now in a teardrop shape, which can provide a more natural result. Overall, Afifi hopes the new advances in reconstruction techniques bring a measure of comfort to women as they go through a mastectomy. "We're making the decision to go ahead with a mastectomy easier," he says. "I hope knowing we have good options for reconstruction would encourage more patients to get mammograms and the [BRCA] test.." OCTOBER 2013 | bravamagazine.com 57