Why I Care: How Dr. Tonya Echols Cole's breast cancer diagnosis changed her view as a doctor

As a doctor and breast cancer survivor, Tonya Echols Cole, MD, understands both sides of treatment. She shares her story of conquering Stage 2 breast cancer and what she has learned from her experience as a patient.

Transcript

00:00

And sometimes being a physician is not a good thing, because I knew from that point that I had cancer. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:07

I had a set of two-year-old twins. I was self-employed. It was really sobering. And never having been on the other side,

00:15

it's a lot easier to reassure someone when you haven't been in their shoes than when you're in their shoes. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:23

I love it. I love radiation. Doing the oncology work is really satisfying

00:30

when you can cure someone because of what you do. That's really gratifying. That whole year, I had been kind of hustling, bustling,

00:38

and I missed my mammogram. So I actually walked across the street to the Breast Center and asked them if they could just squeeze me in. I got a call from our nurse navigator

00:45

and she said, can you come over to the Breast Center right now because they saw something on your mammogram? So when they took the image this time,

00:52

I actually looked at the screen. And my heart just sank because I actually saw the white spot on my mammogram.

01:00

When I saw that, I just froze. And I ended up having a stage two breast cancer where I had lymph node--

01:08

had cancer that had spread to lymph nodes. I had a genetic mutation. So I went from a lumpectomy and radiation and back

01:15

to work to having to have both of my breasts removed and reconstructed. I had to have six months of chemotherapy.

01:23

I had to have six weeks of radiation treatments. And because of that genetic mutation, I had to have my tubes and ovaries removed as well.

01:31

So what I thought was initially going to be a very quick, maybe two months of treatment, ended up being a full year of treatment.

01:38

So it was life-changing. I mean, it totally changed the way I approach patient care now.

01:45

When you're a physician, things are very black and white. There's not a whole lot of room for gray.

01:51

But when you're on the patient side, you realize there really are fifty shades of gray. Now I realize it's important to really let the patient have

01:59

a voice in making some of the treatment decisions that they want. So I've been out of treatment, in remission,

02:06

for three years now. Cancer is not a death sentence. So don't see yourself in your coffin

02:13

and don't put yourself in the ground because there is life after cancer. You can become intentional about creating the life

02:20

that you want to live in the time that you have left. Because I think so many times we don't do that. And we really kind of go to our grave still full of so much

02:31

that we could have left to the world. [MUSIC PLAYING]