Sharon Williams
Study participant shares two tales of survival
Sharon Williams was 15 years old when she was diagnosed in 1981 with Hodgkin's lymphoma. A course of radiation therapy and removal of her spleen cured her of the disease, but she was told she would be at increased risk for breast cancer at an early age.
"I remember Dr. [Holcombe] Grier [co-director of the Jimmy Fund Clinic] encouraging me to do monthly breast exams," says the Fairhaven, Mass., resident - advice she quickly took to heart. In her early 20s, Williams supplemented those exams with annual mammography screenings.
It was a practice that may have saved her life.
Williams is one of 90 women to take part in the Dana-Farber study of patients who had been treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma at a young age. Better informed than some other patients about her future risk of breast cancer, Williams was especially vigilant about following her doctors' advice.
Still, she may have thought she'd beaten the odds. When breast tumors arise in survivors of Hodgkin's lymphoma, they generally do so within eight to 10 years of treatment. Williams made it past the 10-year mark with no problems. Even a lump in her right breast in 1996 proved harmless.
In early 1999, though, Williams felt a lump in her left breast. Her primary care physician felt three. The lumps could no longer be felt when she came to DFCI for an ultrasound and mammography screening, but the mammogram then detected lumps in both breasts. Biopsies confirmed that the masses were cancerous.
That May, Williams had breast surgery. Her surgeon, Barbara Smith, M.D., Ph.D., chief of breast surgical services in the Gillette Center for Women's Cancers at Dana-Farber, explained to her that radiation therapy was not an option for the breast tumors: the radiation she had received as a teenager prevented further radiation to her breasts.
Though Williams was alarmed at the prospect of surgery, the diagnosis of cancer was not in itself shocking, thanks to the information she had been given when younger. "I was always aware of the possibility that I had a higher than average chance of developing breast cancer, so when I went in for the mammogram at Dana-Farber, I wasn't terrified, as many women are," Williams remarks. "In a way, I kind of expected it."
The surgery was followed by two breast reconstruction procedures, and, two years after her initial surgery, Williams is now free of cancer.
"Sharon is an excellent example of how an informed, conscientious survivor of cancer can improve the chances of her long-term survival," Dr. Smith says. "Her participation in the study being led by Dr. Diller will provide an important benefit to the patients who come after her."
(Turning Point, Spring/Summer 2001)
