First Person:
Barbara Schoeman
Edited by Saul Wisnia
Barbara Schoeman retraces the steps she took daily while walking from home to Dana-Farber for radiation treatments.
For Barbara Schoeman, the irony was striking. She had spent 30 years working in the healthcare industry, with a master's degree in public health. Whether helping set up community health centers, or analyzing policy, programs, and legislation for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, all of the Brookline resident's jobs had focused on improving other people's lives. But she wanted to try something new, and decided to pursue her longtime passion for art and photography in design school. Schoeman eventually established her own interior design business, but even with all her contacts in health care, she wasn't planning to seek hospitals as clients. "I'd had enough of hospitals for a while," she recalls with a laugh.
Then, during a routine self-examination in September 2002, she felt a lump in her left breast. Just like that, Schoeman had returned to the healthcare world – this time as a patient. Treated for breast cancer at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, she says she was particularly grateful and aware, given her training, of the sensitive, integrated way these two institutions care for patients.
Three years after her final radiation treatment, back to work and in good health, Schoeman remembers how she got through this traumatic period.
Cancer is a very profound experience of not being in control of your life. You never know what to expect, and you have to learn how to take things hour-by-hour and day-by-day. I thought my background in health care would be helpful during my cancer treatment, and in some ways it was. As a planner, you always have to think about the goal of a program, how it can work, and how to eliminate obstacles. As an analyst, you're often looking back on a failed program and considering what can be done to get around those problems the next time. When something goes wrong, I'm comfortable thinking, "What's the worst end point, and how can we avoid it?"
Of course, when you want to help somebody get through treatment, your goal is for them to think about the best possible outcome, and this is something all my caregivers emphasized. I had many long conversations with them about the intricacies of survival statistics and treatment, and they graciously responded to a seemingly endless number of questions about current research articles. I always knew that no matter what complication might occur, they would know how to deal with it, and we would solve the problem together. Their continuing reassurance made a big difference, both during treatment and afterwards.
What a patient really wants, I found, is to feel that her doctors will be with her all the way through this journey, no matter what – that they will tell the patient: "Yes, of course you're worried – you have cancer. But it's not time to worry yet. If that time comes, I'll be there to worry with you."
"I tried to appreciate each day, or if that day was not a good one, then to be mindful of the moments that were good."
But trying to decipher the existential dilemma with which we all live was the real challenge. Living fully in the midst of uncertainty is, in a sense, everyone's task, whether healthy or ill. None of us has complete control over our lives. None of us knows how long we will live. However, with a diagnosis of cancer, one has an unpleasant glimpse of mortality. You grieve for the old life, so seemingly unencumbered before, now complicated by tests and treatments, by concerns about survival. Then, little by little, you learn to find the emotional energy to look ahead, think about the future, and accept whatever it will be. You find joy in each day.
I am struck by how carefully Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center considers every aspect of a patient's care. Surely, having cancer is a miserable experience. But having all of my treatment, including services from the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrated Therapies, within walking distance made life much easier. Carolyn Kaelin at Brigham and Women's was my surgeon; at Dana-Farber, Eric Winer was my oncologist, David Spigel my oncology fellow, and Jay Harris [also with BWH] my radiation oncologist. A friend of mine called this the "dream team," and she was right. They were all wonderful. It was a total team effort – including my nutritionist, Stacy Kennedy; my meditation teacher, Mary Jane Ott, my nurse practitioner, Janet Kunsman, and my nurses, Kathy Clarke, Liz Kasparian, and Mary Maloney. Everybody was so approachable and accommodating.
- Next: Finding an equilibrium
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