Vital - distributed monthly within the Detroit Free Press & The Detroit News. Also available free in hundreds of local racks

« Articles

There Are No Rules With Cancer

After going from nurse to patient, one survivor offers advice

By Judith Cookis Rubens Photo by Brett Mountain

Joanne Mancini was intimately familiar with breast cancer research and treatment. As a clinical research nurse for the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, she had met hundreds of women seeking treatment for the disease. But she never expected to become a patient herself.

In 2002, when a routine mammogram led to her diagnosis, Mancini, now 48, was floored. "I don’t have cancer in my family. I’m healthy. I just never thought it would happen to me," she says. "All of a sudden I was a patient and I had no idea what was going to happen to me."

Fortunately for Mancini, doctors detected her cancer – ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS – extremely early, in what was only the third mammogram she’d ever had.

Physicians treated Mancini with a lumpectomy, followed by seven-and-a-half weeks of radiation, Monday through Friday, at Karmanos Gershenson Radiation Oncology Center, the same department where she worked. After much debate, Manicini declined the drug tamoxifen to help prevent recurrence; being young, she feared its side effects.

Today, Mancini is cancer-free – and isn’t one to dwell on the "what ifs" of recurrence. "I’ve had the chance to live. I’m not going to think of all the bad things that could happen," she says. But that doesn’t mean the experience didn’t forever change her.

For one thing, she has more empathy for patients. "You can be more true whenlol you’ve been through it yourself, rather than learning through a textbook," she says.

Mancini, who lives in Canton, tried hard to stay strong for her husband, Gary, and children, Amanda, 19, and Brandon, 22. But having cancer also taught her it’s OK to lean on family and friends in times of crisis.

"They want to support you. You need people to get yourself through it," she says.

In fact, on Mancini’s final day of radiation treatment, her Karmanos co-workers surprised her with a special poem and bell to ring, symbolizing her victory over cancer. Mancini herself suggested the idea – years before she was ever diagnosed – after seeing the poem and bell featured on the reality TV medical show Houston Medical.

"Patients ring the bell and everybody stops what they’re doing and applauds them. It sends chills up your back," says Mancini. "It says, ‘This is the end. I’m going to live my life now.’ "

But the biggest lesson she learned was the importance of early detection. She never misses a six-month mammogram check-up. Soon, they will be annual visits.

"Until you have that mammogram and hear the words ‘everything’s fine,’ you start getting anxious," she says.

And she urges her friends to get regular mammograms and OB/GYN check-ups. "It’s detecting it early, before you have symptoms, that you have the best chance for a cure," Mancini says. "You can’t say ‘I don’t have it in my family,’ or ‘I’m too young or too old.’

"There are no rules with cancer."