Transcript

Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz

From We Can Do Hard Things · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 46 min · 19,081 words · 224 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz", an episode of We Can Do Hard Things published October 21, 2025 (1 h 46 min, about 19,081 words). It mentions 10 people, works and ideas, including Amazon Amanda, Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Glennon, Anna Pellet.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers around Amanda's personal experience with breast cancer and the importance of openly sharing her journey to inspire others to advocate for their own health. The conversation highlights the life-saving impact of Amanda's transparency, showing how her story has motivated others to seek medical attention and become proactive in their health, especially during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Key takeaways

  • Awareness without actionable information leads to anxiety; it's an emotional rollercoaster without a safety harness.
  • Amanda's transparency transformed fear into empowerment, inspiring countless others to advocate for their health.
  • Curing disease isn’t the only impact; sharing real stories can lead to lifesaving actions among listeners.
  • Gatekeeping information can be deadly, yet sharing won’t save lives unless it sparks real conversations and actions.
  • Different doctors, different biases—understanding this truth can unlock better health choices for patients everywhere.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Amazon Amanda, Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz, Jen Hatmaker
  2. – 20:00: Amazon Amanda, Glennon
  3. – 40:00: Bumble, Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz, Glennon, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
  4. – 50:00: Amazon Amanda
  5. – 1:00:00: Amazon Amanda
  6. – 1:10:00: Curl Smith, O Positive
  7. – 1:20:00: Anna Pellet
  8. – 1:30:00: Anna Pellet, MIDI Health
  9. – 1:40:00: Amazon Amanda
  10. – 1:45:56: Amazon Amanda

Notable quotes from "Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz"

  • I think it might have been there is no such thing as a podcast emergency. Right. And Jen Hatmaker also said that.
    about Jen Hatmaker · at
  • Stopping Amanda in the street, in the store, in the events to tell her that her decision to share her story led them to become advocates for their own health, which then led them to discoveries they wouldn't have made and were lifesaving.
    about Amazon Amanda · at
  • It's a practice. It's something you choose and keep choosing. The way I love you, Glennon, is by seeing who she is, what she does, and respecting the hell out of that so much that I want to contribute as much as possible in our.
    about Glennon · at
  • Bumble makes sure you are running in the right direction, supporting you with the tips in the right moment and a dedicated expertbacked advice hub. So, it's just designed to get you through every stage.
    about Bumble · at
  • Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz is an internationally recognized breast surgical oncologist and the youngest Latina chief of breast surgery in an academic institution in the United.
    about Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz · at
  • Mission to break down stigmas around everything from hormone health to menopause. Their new product Menov vaginal moisture is specifically formulated to support vaginal…
    about O Positive · at
  • Having a bilateral nipple sparctomy with direct to implant with reensation of my nipple. And she is a breast cancer surgeon who does plastic surgery and does breast surgery.
    about Anna Pellet · at
  • Nonsense. Go straight to Midi. She went online and got an appointment the next day. With Midi, you can meet one-on-one with a perry menopause trained clinician online from…
    about MIDI Health · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Amazon Amanda — Person · Main speaker / Host (patient perspective) · 13 mentions · first at
    She drives the episode’s agenda: reflecting on her breast cancer experience, advocating for ungatekept screening information (dense breasts, MRI), and interviewing Dr. De la Cruz about surgical options and patient decision points.
  • Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz — Person · Main guest (expert interviewee) / Referenced surgeon · 3 mentions · first at
    She is Amanda’s breast surgical oncologist and the featured expert explaining breast-cancer surgical decision points (mastectomy vs lumpectomy, direct-to-implant reconstruction, nipple-sparing, re-sensation, and lymph-node strategy).
  • Glennon — Person · Co-host (referenced by first name) · 3 mentions · first at
    Appears as a co-host/support figure; referenced in voicemails (“Glennon sister and Abby”) and in Amanda’s account of friends encouraging second opinions and supporting her through treatment decisions.
  • Anna Pellet — Person · Referenced expert (external surgeon example) · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited by Dr. De la Cruz as a pioneer/peer associated with re-sensation techniques and as an example of a surgeon choosing nipple-sparing, direct-to-implant, and re-sensation for herself—used to validate these options as credible and current.
  • Jen Hatmaker — Person · Referenced public figure (quoted) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned briefly as someone who said there’s “no such thing as a podcast emergency,” used to contrast podcast stress with life-saving impact from Amanda’s disclosure.

Companies & orgs

  • MedStar Georgetown University Hospital — Company · Healthcare provider · 1 mention · first at
    Hospital where Dr. Lucy De la Cruz serves as chief of breast surgery and director of the Betty Lou Ourisman Breast Health Center.
    Well let's hope let's hope that stat is off. But she serves as chief of breast surgery and director of the Betty Lou Orsman breast health center at MedStar Georgetown…

Sponsors

  • Bumble — Company · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Sponsor of the podcast segment, promoting their dating app and philosophy on love.
  • Curl Smith — Company · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor promoting their curly hair care products, emphasizing natural curl embracement.
    Today's segment is brought to you by Bumble, the app committed to bringing people closer to love.
  • O Positive — Company · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor promoting their women's health supplements, specifically targeting menopause symptoms.
  • MIDI Health — Company · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Sponsor offering virtual healthcare services for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause.

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Recently, we were talking about some stressful thing going on with the podcast and somebody said, "We have to chill. It's not like we are curing disease here. It's not like we are saving lives here.

I think it might have been there is no such thing as a podcast emergency. Right. And

Jen Hatmaker also said that. Right. And then we sat there and immediately thought about I think perhaps the most important thing that this podcast has ever done.

Yeah. which is give the gift of Amanda's transparency through her breast cancer.

What people don't use the word journey anymore, do they? What are we saying? I think they do. I think they say journey. Uh I mean halibahoo. Okay, so let's use that. So Amanda's trans through her breast cancer halibahoo.

Halahoo or halaloo. We're going with who. It's not a word, but I just think I liked it. So

okay, halahoo. It is. And it's it's hard. Well, what we're going to do today is kind of look back on that. Halibahoo. and then the decision to discuss it openly and then the miracles and magic that happened as a result of that decision which people are continuously stopping Amanda in the street, in the store, in the events to tell her that her decision to share her story led them to become advocates for their own health, which then led them to discoveries they wouldn't have made and were lifesaving. giving to them.

Mhm. So it's unbelievable. The theme of this is celebration that we are over a year out of the hullahoo. That the decision to really take care of yourself and become an advocate for yourself is the most loving thing you can do for anyone you love. And we're going to hear from Amanda about where she is post Halabahoo and what she wants you to know that could save your own life.

Amanda, no pressure. Go ahead. No pressure. No pressure. Yes. Yes. And it is um I asked if we could do this episode because it is breast cancer awareness month and I feel like a lot of things happen in breast cancer awareness month which I love if those feel empowering and wonderful for people and it feels like solidarity that feels amazing. I for me personally it feels like the best thing that you could do with a moment of awareness is ungatekeep information and it feels um so I feel like the awareness let's just you know double tap on the aware piece of the awareness you know less colored t-shirts more information is my particular love language And I think that what's been incredible to me is that, you know, it isn't me sharing because just sharing information does nothing. You know, like you could just have information. But what is so remarkable is the people who have heard the information and then gone to do

something about it, which is really incredible when you think about that. people that is within their power to do and they're doing it and that just get makes me so excited and it makes me think that it really is the gatekeeping of information that is the problem because when we're hearing from all of these women they're like

good information I can use information I can save my own life but it's the information that is the problem

right and that's what I think we should be doing with breast cancer awareness month so I feel excited and I just want to like turn the mic and the mirror and the celebration back to the people who are doing this because that feels there's so many of them in the pod squad and they

are really saving their lives and by extension their famil family's lives for doing that. So, I would love if we could listen to a few of the voicemails that these are just three that have come in, the thousands that have come in from people like this of members of the pod squad. So, I want you to hear a few.

Okay. Beautiful. And before we do that, can I just say that I think you just articulated why we're all insane right now.

Yeah. is like the more awareness quotequote rises of these problems with no information, the lower the information, the gap between those two is what insanity is. Like if you're not going to tell me how to fix it, then maybe I don't even want to be aware

because awareness without a plan equals insanity. So, right, that's just anxiety. Awareness without a plan is anxiety. So, I mean,

thank you. That is um what I want to say to that and to give an overview of what we're going to do today is these are things if you are a person who is not aware that you are on a breast cancer

halibahoo. Um, these are things that will help you find out if you actually are.

Um, and will equip you to have the information you need to know you are either safe and how to continue to stay safe. And if you are already on the ride um or know someone who is my experience was absolutely shocking that I thought that I had a problem and therefore there would be a solution for it and what I found was I had a problem and four different surgeons give me four very different solutions for it. Yes. And that is not because there are four different solutions for it that are equally good. That is because there are four different solutions that those doctors

are good at. And so that was what was offered to me. And so what we're going to do in the second part of this is my wonderful surgeon um Dr. Lucy de la Cruz is going to come on and I'm going to ask her all of the questions that I had, everything that baffled me during the process. All the decision points that were not made clear to me as decision points. They were presented to me as answers based on what that particular doctor's bias was. And that is not a dig. Everyone has a bias. I have a bias. We all have biases. But they were not presented as biases and therefore their answers. they were presented as the answer. And so what I want everyone to be aware of in breast cancer awareness is a how to find out if you have breast cancer because the screening you're having for 50% of the women is not cutting it.

And number two, if you do have a diagnosis, here are all your decision points that you may not even be aware are decisions. So that's what we're going to do in the second half. And

what I want to say about the whole awareness without a solution is breast cancer is highly treatable, highly survivable in the vast majority of cases. And a lot of people are not getting screened because it's so you don't want to ask your partner if they love you because you don't want to know the answer, right? Like you don't want to find out if you have breast cancer because

that you think that's like a death sentence, right? It's not. 70 to 80% of breast biopsies come back negative.

Like you you want to get that information that is good for you to get. And the the key is just finding it as early as possible because as early as possible makes it more treatable and it is imminently treatable. My life is zero% impacted. Zero.

Except I have nice perky plastic breasts. You really do. They're lovely. They're lovely.

The hullahoo. The halahoo. Booby prize. It's the booby prize. It's a booby prize. Okay. So, I say that a little bit in Jess, but I'm saying 0% impacted, right? And also, I never have to worry about breast cancer again because I have no breasts. So, another upside that we should not overlook. All right. So, this is some of the responses we have received over the last year.

Hi, my name is Anna and this message is actually for Amanda. This is probably not the first call you've gotten like this and it probably won't be the last. But when you did your podcast on breast cancer, I listened to all of them and I thought, how nice that she is doing this for other people because won't everyone else benefit from this? And I did take your information to heart, but I did not imagine that this would be my story as well. So I also had some indicators of high risk and after a clear mammogram I pushed my doctor to have an MRI and I thought I was going in to just check a box and be super cautious and as it turns out I have breast cancer.

Thankfully, it's stage one because I caught it so early, but the surgeon said that it would have been a long time before it showed up on a mammogram and I wouldn't have felt it for a long time either and it probably would have been a lot worse. So, in addition to saving your life, you probably have saved my life and I don't know how many other people besides us. So, thank you so much for all that you did to share that information and get the word out there. Hi, Glennon sister and Abby. This is Susie. I had to call and leave you this message which I hope you hear.

Last summer, I listened to the episodes about Amanda's breast cancer diagnosis and also the episode with the breast cancer expert. And that fall at my doctor appointment, I asked if I could be approved for increased screening based on my dense breast tissue and my family history. And I was approved for alternating MRI mammogram every six months. So I had my first MRI in December and in early January I was asked to come in for some followup based on that MRI and by February I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My surgery will be followed by radiation, but because it was detected so early, I'm not expected to need any chemotherapy.

And all of this will happen before my annual mammogram would have even been due. So, if I hadn't listened to your message and advocated for myself, I wouldn't even know about this cancer yet inside my body. I just wanted to call and say thank you and just make sure that you know what a difference you're making and I'm so happy that Amanda is well. Um that's it. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Mary Beth and I just wanted to thank you, particularly Amanda, for being willing to talk about your process. I hadn't had a mammogram in 15 years when I went last week and had one and then an ultrasound and biopsy and found out I have breast cancer. So, just wanted to let you know you saved another life.

Oh my god. So, how cool is that that people are brave enough to receive information and advocate for themselves and get what they need. And I just think I think it's an it's an information hole. And that is the thing because that's that's an example, right? People don't have the information that they need to make the best decisions for themselves. And people will make the best decisions for themselves with the right information. That is what these people did. It has nothing to do with anyone being like brave or doing anything like all I did was share information that I wish I would have had before I had it. And then the people did what they did with it. And I just think that's so beautiful. And one of the things that I want to talk about is particularly with those first two messages, um, the third woman, that's amazing. Sometimes when you think you're 15 years out and you're like, "That ship was sailed and now I'm scared

of what to find." Like, God bless her. That is so brave to face that demon and it's so amazing. And with the first two, I want to just re-re all the show notes all the other breast cancer episodes that we have done. um so that you have like the full packet of information. If you know someone's going through, you can send them this episode and in the show notes it'll have all the episodes that we've done on breast cancer. Just all the information that we have found.

But what they're referring to is um uh breast density. And what I want you to know is that three days before I went to go get my double masectomies, I had to for insurance purposes go get a mammogram. And the people doing the mammogram knew that I was going to get double masectomies. And they did the mammogram and they came back and they gave it to me and they said, "You are 100% clear."

Oh my god. we would never have suggested that you do any kind of further screening. We would have cleared you completely. And the reason that is the case is because I have extremely dense breasts. So, I'm going to take two minutes and go through breast density because this is something you really do need to know about yourself.

Yeah, there are four categories of breast density. A, B, C, D. Okay. Half of people with breasts are A and B. Half are C and D. Okay. A and B. A is the least dense. This is congratulations. You hit the lottery. Most of your breast tissue is fatty. The reason this is important is because when you do a mammogram, fatty breast tissue comes up black on the mammogram. Any kind of tumors or masses or cancer come up white. So the reason that that is great is because a mammogram will cover you. You will know um that something has occurred through a mammogram.

The contrast The contrast contrast, right? Because the rest of your breast tissue is black. Problem spots turn out white. Your doctors can say, "Look, I see something." Great. Mammogram all day. You're set.

Category B is also considered low density. There's scattered areas of what they call dense granular tissue, but also fiber and fibrous tissue. So you're going to have some white spots in there, but generally you're someone reading a mammogram will be able to detect that you have something concerning happening. Okay? So if you're in A or B, you are um 50% of the people 10% in A 40% in B. If you're doing that and and you are doing your regular mammograms, you will likely be detected.

And Amanda, is there do they tell you that? Like is that something that all women can go in and say I need to know whether I'm A, B, C or D?

Okay, great question. So your if you are getting mammograms, your mammogram will tell you whether you have dense tissue or not dense tissue. It's written there in fine print. The problem is they do not tell you whether you're A, B, C, or D.

So if if they tell you you don't have dense tissue, you know you're A or B. Okay? Okay. And the mammogram is likely sufficient for you. If they tell you you have dense tissue, you don't know if you are C or D. And um that's really critical and I'm going to tell you why in just a second. But every mammogram tells your health care person whether you are C or D. So you need to if you if you know that you are dense

your first question needs to be am I category C dense or category D dense. So do I just have dense breasts like 40% of the population who are in category C or do I have category D extremely dense breast which is one and 10 people

and if you're a category D you absolutely cannot rely on your mammogram. So it's kind of this false sense of well if 50% of the people have it it can't be that bad because they categorize C and D together and call it dense. So category C is most of the breast tissue is comprised of dense granular and fibrous tissue. So that means most of your tissue will be white. So it will be harder to see if you have um some concerning mass there. So that is something it's called a heterogeneously dense if you are if you're hearing those words you are see okay

that you might want to get ultrasound 3D mimography or MRI my category D friends. Okay this is um likely the friends that we heard the first two on the voicemail. This is me. I have extremely dense breasts. This means that I like one in 10 people one in 10 people with breasts will my breasts will appear completely white on the mamogram. So that is why I was cleared and said you're all set. You bet. Go home. You have no problems. It 3 days before my breast had to be removed for cancer because you literally can't see it. And I and I had a 3D mimography for that and it was still cleared. So the important thing to know is that mammograms miss between 50 to 60% of cancer in those with dense breasts. So it's a it's a flip of a coin. And that's just dense breasts, not extremely dense breasts. So if you are category D, what you need to do like the other callers is you need to say I have extremely dense

breasts. I need to have an MRI. The MRI is a completely different scanning tool that can go in and see things that your mimography cannot see because your breasts are extremely dense.

Can I ask you one question that I think the pod squad's probably thinking right now? So, let's just get it out of the way.

If you know that a C or D breast is especially a D, cancer cannot be seen inside of that. So there must be another test given to protect the woman or the person with breasts from the cancer that could be inside of them. If you know that and you have to advocate for that, why the hell are the doctors not knowing that and advocating for that? Like that's a everything you've said is factual.

So why is it that the the person has to be a detective and say these things when we're trusting medical professionals? Why do it can't be possible that they don't know this?

Correct. Um, this is for sure, like anything else, a money issue. This has to do with additional screenings costing additional dollars. Like there's there's there's no other anything makes sense. There is a certain threshold under which you absolutely have the right to um you absolutely have the right to have insurance pay for an MRI. In my experience, if you go to your doctor and you say I have extremely dense breasts and I am advocating for myself to have the MRI,

they usually to cover their ass will approve it. Oh, and therefore your insurance will approve it. There's also several scores that you can take like if you have a family history of any cancer together with dense breasts then it will reach a certain threshold of likelihood that you are above average chance of getting cancer than the average bear and that will allow you to have insurance cover it.

Okay. I need you to also know that I have heard from two people who said who had dense breasts. They told their they listened to our um last podcast episode about this. Their doctor said, "You don't need an MRI." They sent the link to the podcast episode to their doctor and said, "If after you listen to this, you still don't need an you still think I don't need an MRI, then I'm cool with it." And the doctor uh approved the MRI. So it is agitating enough and advocating for yourself enough. It shouldn't have to be the case. It's that it is, but it is So now we just have to advocate for ourselves.

Okay. The other really critical thing that you need to know about dense breasts is it is not just that it makes breast cancer so difficult to detect. If you have category D extremely dense breasts, it is both number one almost impossible to find in an MRI, but number two, you have an independent increased risk for breast cancer. Mhm.

Okay. So, we're taking a population that has an independent risk for breast cancer regardless of whether they could find it easily

and giving them a test that can't detect it. Unbelievable. So, that is why it's important. It's important to know if you're category D, you are already at risk

more than others. So, both of those things are true. People with this highest density breast, this category um D density, it's called extremely dense, are four to six times more likely to get breast cancer than any other category. So, one in 10 people, you need to find out. And we're um and what we're doing is they're going to offer you ultrasound first. They're going to offer you 3D mimography. You're going to say, "Thank you so much, and also I will be getting an MRI."

And you're just going to push until they do. And make sure it's on record that you have asked for it, that you have said you've needed it, that you have all the rest of your risk factors calculated, so that they know and have on record that they have been alerted that you know your risk. And when they know that that is the case, they will approve your MRI.

Okay. Wow. It's almost like it would be nice to have a a place where we could report doctors who don't approve the MRI, but that's different. Okay, carry out. Do you know what I mean? Like that maybe that would scare them to do the right thing is like some public shaming form. Um,

well, if it all goes back to money and it's all like, then they're also going to be equally scared of getting sued

for having an MRI requested that they disapproved and then you h ended up with stage four cancer. So, like it you're you're you're using that to your advantage.

That's right. Just like it's to our disadvantage that they don't automatically prescribe these MRIs. And the last thing I want to say is if you are running into a lot of difficulty and you're trying and you're trying, there is something called a mini MRI, it's still quite expensive and out of reach for a lot of people, but if you go in for a full MRI, it is thousands of dollars, right? And that's what your insurance covers. There is a thing called a mini MRI that is about a $500 out of pocket that if you are facing so many hurdles and you're in a position to do that, it is equally um efficacious from a diagnostic perspective for breast cancer. So you can act you can elect to do that yourself if that is within your capabilities to do that.

So that is the review of density and category D. Um, the only D ever associated with my breasts is density. Um, and I just am really excited that Dr. Dea Cruz is coming to talk to us about all of the things because she is a straight shooter and is the the opposite. What What's the opposite of gatekeeping? Gate letting. She's just she's just thrown gate opener.

Gate opener. Gate opener. And um what is wild is that do you remember Lori from our Virginia event?

Yes. Okay. So this woman on the tour that we went on, this woman Lori, she she was like in the first few rows and she stood up during our event and she said, "Hi, my name is Lori. I just I was just diagnosed with breast cancer and the only reason I got my diagnosis was because of your episodes that um educated us on it. And she had a question. She was had a a couple of kids and she was going through it and she was trying to figure out she was asking questions about how to how to deal. And so I was able to like jump down and give her a hug. And after the show was over, she said she was having

in the question in front of everyone, she said she was having her surgery the next week.

Yeah. And I was upset because I was like, damn it, I don't I wonder who she's having her surgery with. You know, I've basically taken meetings with every single breast surgeon in Northern Virginia. Like I was like, oh no, that ship has sailed. And I um after I like jumped off the stage and to talk to her and I said, you know, where where are you getting your surgery? Who who are you working with? And um she said, Dr. Dea Cruz. I know.

Oh my god, that's crazy. We both started crying because I was like, you're gonna it's like meant to be. She's so great. And you ended up exactly where you should be. And then she started crying because she didn't know that she was my doctor. Anyway, I just um it it just felt like like I know there's other like incredible doctors in Northern Virginia. I'm not saying that. It just felt like this like connection of that she had found her way there.

Then two weeks later, I'm walking into my one-year appointment with Dela Cruz. I walk in and I'm I'm haven't been there for six months. I walk in and Lori is sitting there in the waiting room. She has just finished her uh first postop appointment

and she's the only other one in the room. It was so wild. It was It just felt like ordained. Um, and then Dea Cruz sent me a picture of the operating room the day that Lori had her operation.

And she's sitting there, her are uh the s the other surgeon, the plastic surgeon that did the reconstruction, Dr. Van and Dr. Dea Cruz, and Lori is holding her we can do hard things book in

in the actual operating room. It was so beautiful. Amazing. This is just amazing. The intertwining of all of the lives is just it's such a beautiful thing. Such a

We're so proud of you. Yeah, sister. We're so proud of you. Okay, so we're going to go hear from Dr. Dea Cruz now and get all the answers that anybody else might need. And I just want to say the way you just described that in the first I feel like

you it's was so clear. Yeah, really. It's going to be so helpful. Okay. Um so we're gonna talk to Dea Cruz now. So, what we're going to do is I am I'm I'm stealing Dr. Dea Cruz to myself.

Okay. Um, so she and I are going to get on and it's basically going to be anything. You are you've been diagnosed and you're staring down the tunnel of what does surgery look like? You don't know what questions to ask of doctors that you are meeting with. You don't know what your options are. You're being presented with A, but you've heard that maybe B, C, and D are things. How do we know what questions to ask, what um places to push on, where to advocate for ourselves, and um what actual decision points we have, even if they are not being presented to us.

Amazing. And then you're going to send this episode to every person that you know that has breasts um as a gift to them. Okay. Yes.

Me personally or or our listeners? You are. And then we're going to relax. Okay.

Okay. No, our listeners. Say hi to De La Cruz for us. We love We Tell Tell Dr. Dea Cruz. We love her. My favorite part was right after when the after my surgery when I went out and I was like I I was texting you and Abby and I was like I think I think it went well and then and then you both texted back and you were like it did go well. Dela Cruz already sent a picture of your breasts to us. I think they look great.

It's a waiting room and I was like they look great. Okay. We love you. All right.

Byebye. Bye. And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to We Can Do Hard Things for free.

Today's segment is brought to you by Bumble, the app committed to bringing people closer to love. We live in a culture that treats love like a finish line. You win if you get the relationship, the ring, the picture perfect story. Now listen, you know, I love winning and I will make racing from the car into the grocery store into a game just so that I can win it. But the truth is love isn't a race or a prize. It's a practice. It's something you choose and keep choosing. The way I love you, Glennon, is by seeing who she is, what she does, and respecting the hell out of that so much that I want to contribute as much as possible in our shared life. So, she does the laundry in our house. Thank you. And I make sure to take off my socks before I toss them into the laundry and turn them inside out so that she doesn't Isn't that the worst part of laundry, having to turn things right side out? and I love her in

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All right, Pod Squad. As I promised you, we now have the joy and honor of being with Dr. Dea Cruz. I'm turning this phone off because not a damn person is gonna bother us for the next while. De la Cruz, we're getting this done. Okay, let me do your fancy bio because you are quite fancy.

Okay. Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz is an internationally recognized breast surgical oncologist and the youngest Latina chief of breast surgery in an academic institution in the United States.

Maybe maybe that's has changed because you know I've aged since I've been here.

Well, no, I'm saying it's in the bio that position. Yes, if there are more that's good.

That is actually good. You're right. of the minority of the minority in the surgical field. So definitely

well let's hope let's hope that stat is off. But she serves as chief of breast surgery and director of the Betty Lou Orsman breast health center at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, a nationally ranked center of excellence in breast cancer care. Dr. Dea Cruz specializes in nipplesparing masectomies with structural preservation and reensation. Don't worry, we're going to talk about what the hell all these things mean. With a focus on highly specialized single stage implant reconstruction as an associate professor of surgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine, she has, thank you, baby Jesus, trained the next generation of breast surgeons, she is not only a preeminent trailblazing breast surgeon, she is my beloved doctor and friend. and she is an absolute beast who just came 10 minutes from surgery and is here to join us because she can do hard things.

So, Da Cruz, thank you. Thank you so much. And by the way, we can all do hard things, right? And so, you know, I operated this morning. I took a shower, got here, and set up a computer, which by the way was the hardest thing of my morning.

I feel like with doctors and stuff, it's like you can be in there with organs, but you're like a power switch on a computer.

I know. I was like, "Oh my god, how am I going to set up this podcast on my computer?" And oh my god, is this going to work? And so I did. And so I'm really proud of myself right now. Pretty proud

it did. Um, tell me how you feel about this. I told the Pod Squad a bit ago that my goal for our time together, and you tell me if we should have different goals in addition to this, is that like if you're on this journey where you are just like, "Okay, I have a diagnosis. I'm going to be facing a surgery and there either seems to be no decisions because someone's just telling you this is your choice and you have to take it or so many decisions or sometimes a mix of both where you're just being offered one thing but you're hearing a lot of noise about but so and so is getting something else and I'm reading online that there's three other things I could be doing and so I think it would be great if we just went through and I can tell a little bit about how it worked for me, but just get to a place where we can talk about here are all the decision points and here's like the different options that you have because it feels

like for me at the very beginning I went to one doctor and I got one set of answers and it was you're definitely going to have to lose your nipples. you will have your lymph nodes removed, then another doctor, which the only reason I had enough um capacity emotionally, this is putting aside the fact that I have like the privilege and financial freedom and time to be able to research these things, but I didn't have the emotional capacity to

even face finding a second opinion, right? It was just because Glenn and Abby were here and they were like, "That didn't feel so right. Are you sure?" And then the next person, okay, maybe you can keep your nipples, but you're going to have two surgeries. You're going to have one surgery to get rid of the cancer and another surgery for reconstruction. And so, it's going to be like this year-long process of things. Then a third surgery, then I meet you, and then this is where my love story ends. Um, or begins as it were. But it the whole time and I didn't have a complicated diagnosis. I didn't have a complicated situation, but it so it was shocking to me to go to four different surgeons and hear four different answers as if they were definitive and the end of the story as opposed to here are all the things that could be the case. I do this one and so here's what I would offer you. So that's what I

want to kind of help walk people through because it feels like there's a kind of gatekeeping around this information that we should open the gates a little bit. So I think it just you know one of the things that I always tell patients and I tell my fellows when I teach them is that I was very fortunate to be taught very early on in my residency by someone who was a breast surgeon who instilled in me the idea that a woman deserves a choice when they have it. There are some women that don't have choices surgically and if they do have a choice you should present it to them and understand that they are going to be you know part of the process and one of the things that she also instilled in me Dr. Dr.

Lesnikowski, she said, "Lucy, never stop learning because when you stop learning, it's not just you that gets um your career is trumped, but your patients get don't get the best of the best." And so with that in mind, when I became a breast surgeon, I always said, I'm going to push the envelope here and knowing that it's oncologically safe, but phys physically I can do it for my patients. And so, you know, I think it's just part of my my mindset. It's also part of my belief that when women come to me, I want to make sure that this is almost like that they look back as this and this is not a defining moment that makes them feel like they lost something. Um, we all lose something through breast cancer. I my mom had breast cancer and even I lost something as a family member because obviously now I'm at higher risk of breast cancer. So, you know, I'm I'm now having to get screening and all that

stuff. But patients who go through breast cancer, they don't sign up to have breast cancer. They don't sign up to have surgery. They don't sign up some in some cases to have chemo. So, what am I here to do? I'm here to let them know that my job is to make sure that when they're done surgically that they still are able to recognize themselves and that I can minimize that uh kind of shock to their body. Also, there's decision fatigue. So you're asking someone in a very stressful time of their lives to make the most significant decision that they may do as a woman for their quality of life, their sexuality.

Um you know sometime some of us are defined by our nipples. I I I sure am, you know, and I wouldn't want to lose my nipple if I didn't have to lose my nipple. And so um and sometimes, you know, we talk to patients about it and you're like, "Oh, it's a well, no, I I have one and I want to keep it if I could if I could avoid it." So yeah, it's just talking about the patients giving them the options you either a lumpyctomy or mastctomy. If you have a mastctomy, how can we minimize the trauma? How can we expedite the healing and do it all oncologically safe? You know, I've been doing this for 12 years.

It's not that I'm leaving you know that I'm putting cosmetic in front of cancer. No, I'm actually I think there's no reason to not prioritize conic outcome with cosmetic outcome and build that bridge which is called enkoplasty. The Europeans have been doing it for years. We've been doing it here in America for years and there's a vast vast vast number of literature to support that to be offered to our patients.

You know, it's so interesting because I know that doctors have this the idea is you have to have informed consent, right? Like but what's really interesting to me is how do you have informed consent for a procedure if you're not informed that there are alternatives to that procedure? And let me just give you an example which is that we're going to get to like the decision points being you know masectomy versus lumpctomy the direct to reconstruction you know the breast surgery to reconstruction versus a kind of delayed reconstruction where you're having two surgeries. We're going to get to nipple sparing versus non-nipple sparing nerve grafting and reensation versus not. Um and then the whole lymph node issue which people need to know about. So we're going to get to all those. cuz I want to assure everyone we're going to get to them. But I want to ex like my you just brought up all the nipples sparing stuff and when I

went to the first surgeon I went to and said you are going to have to she said you're going to have to lose your nipples and I was in survival warrior mode and I was just adjusting to all of these things and said and just kind of like buckled down and went dead inside and was like Okay? You know, like, okay, this is the whole mentality we have around this is warrior. You're you're a breast cancer warrior. You're fighting. You're battling. And so, when you're in that mode, you're like, okay, you're telling me something that I'm going to have to accept and I am doing my job of accepting it. And then after I talked to you and then I went back and said, "Wait, I'm confused because now I'm hearing from a couple of other surgeons that I that I can find out if I need to lose my nipples after and have it confirmed rather than preemptively losing my nipples." And she said the following. She said, "Well, you didn't

seem that upset when I told you that you had to lose your nipples, but if it's that upsetting, we we can talk about it." And this is what this is just feels so important. Not to bash that doctor, although I do think that was for sure, but like but this is we are going into it as women and survivors and like battle mentality being like if you tell me something that I have to do, I'm going to take it on the chin and I'm going to keep fighting for my life and I'm going to adjust to it. But the idea being had I burst out crying in that office and thrown a fit and shown I was upset about that, you would have given me other options.

Yeah, that's insane. I mean, I can't attest to that kind of um recommendation from anybody because usually, you know, as a surgeon, we all look at the imaging and we kind I mean, I do tell patients, you may lose your nipple if I go in there and your margin is positive. We may have to go back and take it out. I have done enough of these that I feel like we have removed I mean in my past you know when I first started when I was young and fresh and bushies bride I and I wanted to do everything you know kind of like um you know kind of what every a lot of a lot of other people were doing which was removing nipples in the setting

and I would look at the final pathology and notice that the nipple was not involved and I kind of felt like this is not right this doesn't feel good and so I was like you know what I'd rather remove it after because it's a smaller procedure. You can do it in the office. Um it's, you know, if you need it, then the discussion with you and I would have been a different discussion. I would have been like, Amanda, you need to have this nipple removed. And then you would have said, Lucy, you did everything I you could. And I'm and that's usually the kind of response that I get from losing a nipple because they're positive, right? Um the patient will be like, you know what, at least we gave it a shot. Um, and so I feel that in my mind there's no harm by doing that. We test it, we sample it in the like, you know, in the pathology department. The pathology comes back, my plastic surgeon will take you back a week later and

usually they'll either do it in the office or they'll do it in the operating room, but it takes like 15 minutes to remove that nipple that's been affected. It's really, you know, incredible how many young women are getting diagnosed with breast cancer. Um, and at I mean I've been in practice for 12 years and I remember when I went to medical school and I graduated in 2004, we learned that breast cancer was a disease of the aging and I think the con the counseling today for women is a completely different counseling than maybe the one that my mom got as far as her breast surgery and you know she is had a small tumor she had a lumpctomy she's 75 you know the younger women who have a longer life expectancy They want to reduce that risk of local recurrence although there is no survival difference right but they're always worried they're like well I'm going to have to get an MRI a mamogram am I going to have to do more biopsies

and a lot of the biopsies and a lot of I mean the mastctomies that we do are not really for oncologic reasons they're really because if patients want peace of mind patients want symmetry and patients don't want to have a six-month follow-up with then followed biopsies and things like that because oncologically there's no difference a lymphtomy and a mastctomy oncologically have the same survival they have a slower a lower recurrence rate but they survival is not impacted by my surgery by doing bilateral mastctomy. Now when we talk to younger and we'll talk about that if you have if you want to talk about it but when we talk to younger womens what they want to do is if I'm going to have a surgery I want to look symmetric I want to be able to get naked and have intimacy without feeling like I have to explain myself or or be unsure or be shy. I mean you know I remember when I got divorced I was like oh my god how am

I going to date again? you know, I just had babies. My body's I'm in my 40s. Like, my body's changing.

Imagine going through that and then also like having to make this decision or being single or being, you know, with in a relationship and having I mean, I don't know just insecurities about your like your sexuality after and dealing with all of that. These are things that we talk to patients about. And I significantly feel that that's one of the things that I thank my mentor for because she brought that to light to me. She would talk to women about it. She would talk to me about it. She said, "You know, we are touching women's lives and make sure that that touch that you do is the best touch that you will ever do because it's the one touch that will be there in their lives forever. But if they have great outcomes, that's the biggest satisfaction and biggest gift that I can do to a patient to give that to them,

you know, to be able to give them that opportunity to be cancer-free, to look and feel good."

Yes. Yes. Uh, okay. you just touched on a big part of and and I'm going to try to um speak in lay people terms and then you tell us you tell me where I'm getting it wrong. Okay. So, your first decision, which may or may not be a decision for some people, it it was not for me, but if you're going to have to have breast cancer removed, your first decision is this one. Is it going to be masectomy or lumpctomy?

Yes. Okay. As I understand lumpctomy, it is lump. Right. We are going to go in, we're going to physically remove the part of your breast that is cancer and we are going to leave the breast intact. So you may have that as an option or you might not. I did not because my breasts are not big enough to have anything left over if that were to have happened. But it depending on the size of your breast, depending on the relative ratio of breast to cancer, that's a very different um analysis.

Yes. Also impacted by that is what you just touched on which is even if I was a candidate for a lumpctomy. I don't think I would have chosen it because I really appreciate the peace of mind I have now in terms of take all the breast tissue out. I don't have to be have it hanging over the back of my mind. I am going to need to go for MRIs every year and I'm just going to kind of be waiting for this this fearsome threat to descend upon me again. And so are those what are the other considerations uh because since I have no breast tissue left, I don't even get mammogs or or MRIs anymore because there's there isn't anything left for me to be looking at.

So other than the like ratio of cancer to total breast tissue and the continuing monitoring that needs to be done to the extent you have a lumbctomy and therefore you still have breast tissue to monitor. Are there other considerations that people have when they're making that decision? So I I when I see patients in the office, I see patients who come just first for me and then they come second, third, fourth, fifth opinion. And I think one of the things that they they go by and I'm very data driven. You know, I like numbers. I like percentages. So normally what I tell patients is that a lumpyctomy patient obviously has residual disease. I mean residual breast and the risk of cancer coming back to the breast is 0.5 to 1% per year and it's cumulative. So

0.5 to 1% per year. So it's like compounding interest. It's like the first year say you have 1% the second year go it goes up and up. But that's that's a pretty low number. If you get all of that out

0.5 to 1% each year compounding okay compounding over the years. So some women feel like that is too much for them. And the risk of um local recurrence from a mastctomy it's up to 8% in your lifetime. So that's from now till like you know the end of time because we do remove 98% of the breast tissue. There's 2% of breast tissue that is it's it's in entangled within your subcutaneous fat and skin. I would say you have like very little of it because you're but but some women it just depends on your BMI. It depends on your body habit is these the the skin flap thickness is really relative to the the thickness of your skin with your subcutaneous fat. So women like you and I would have like smaller pretty thin flaps and then some women have little thicker flaps. Ideally you don't want them to be like if you didn't have a mistctomy but you know most women have I would say about this much breast tissue

like a subcutaneous fat left behind that we and you're holding up like a millimeter of something. Yeah. Okay. So this is actually you cut off all the breast tissue. This is the tissue that's basically connected to your skin so that you can save your skin.

Yeah. keeping you know so patients say okay well for me that local recurrence risk is too high and and I don't want to live with that I rather have a mistctomy and lower that risk I I still tell them listen there's no survival benefit because patients don't die of breast cancer in the breast breast cancer recurrence doesn't mean that you're going to die of breast cancer actually most patients who have a recurrence don't have don't develop don't have metastatic disease they just have a recurrence that happens in the breast and nowhere else in the body right so we try to educate patients like that because they feel like if they have a recurrence this is it the cancer has gone to other parts of the body and not necessarily and

so you in that case if you have a recurrence you'd go back and do another lumpctomy or masectomy at that point

probably a mistctomy that would be theation so and then the third thing is some patients are like well I'm going to have to get radiation in most cases patients will get radiation after lumpctomy and some patients don't want to have radiation um there's some side downside to having radiation there's um skin toxicity now there are patients that are going to have radiation when they have mastctomy because they have lymph nodes that are positive. their tumor is large.

And in those cases, I feel like a lot of those patients, they make the decision of a lumpctomy versus mastctomy really based on that information that I just told you. They want symmetry. They want peace of mind. They want they don't want to have MRIs. They don't want to have any more mammograms. So, they make that decision even though they're going to have radiation. It's not the driving. The driver is that kind of thing that they feel like it. I mean, we counsel patients say, "Listen, this is your risk with, this is your risk without. This is what we would offer you with a lumpctomy. This is what we would offer you with a mastctomy. It's in my prevy to say, "Okay, where do you feel comfortable?" You don't have to make a decision today. Go home, think about it.

Yeah. Take my little sheet of paper that I write down with all the designs and the drawings. Take it home, call me, and we can have another conversation. This is not a drive by I'm ordering

D and then I go home and that's it. The decision is made. This is a big decision. And so that's why I want to make sure that I that I tell women out there that they should advocate to get options choices.

Yes. And then, you know, the surgeon patient relation, I always call it a marriage. You date a lot and then you marry the right one, but it's a long-term relationship that you have and that you want to make sure that your patients are educated and you're they're empowered because it is also their body and their choice. This is such a good point because it isn't because everyone has a bias and my bias is against future threats like I want to operate from the lowest threshold of future threats and and that isn't to say like and so in my case I was like masectomy is what I want and it and it's very clear from where I am and there's a thousand reasons I mean that's a really really solid points for people to consider if you are lumpctomy versus mass mc ectomy.

First of all, your candidacy for that is going to depend on the size of your breast, the size of uh your cancer.

You're going to want to consider your level of comfort with continuing monitoring and possible recurrence with the idea that the recurrence rate is

compound slightly higher with the lumpctomy, but we're still talking five to 1%

per year. So, compounding per year, 10 years is 5 to 10%, 20 years is 10 to 20%. Okay. 10 years 10 to 20%.

No, 10 years is 5 to 10%. 20 10 to 20%. 30 is 15 to 30%. Versus masectomies is a flat rate 8% for the rest of your life. With the idea that if it were to recur, this is not a death sentence. This is

It is not a death sentence. Yes. Yes. We go and deal with the cancer again. So if it recurs. So I wanted to say this because a lot of people feel like surgeons um we treat local disease. We do not treat systemic disease.

The systemic disease treatment is very important for the patients. Um the survival benefit is seen with treatment that is systemic disease treatment meaning systemic like if patients are invasive cancer um they may get chemo. If patients have estrogen progesterone positive invasive cancer and if they haven't had a bilateral you know if if um they they will have estrogen blockers. If you have DCIS and you have a bilateral mastctomy you don't need estrogen blockers but if you have DCIS and a lumpctomy you will need estrogen blockers. This not only impacts local disease but it it actually impacts survival. meaning taking those medications prevents disease from going anywhere else in the body and attacks those cells and reduces the risk of it going somewhere else and becoming metastatic meaning impacting your survival and that's kind of one of the ideas that I always say when when they see me and they're like you're you're

you say I'm like well listen I operated on you but the saviors are really the medical oncologists they're the ones that actually treat the systemic realm and they're the ones that prevent cancer from going somewhere else with their treatments and that's why I'm I'm actually telling patients that, you know, there's for that decision- making also to be very educated. Um, because skipping some of those treatments does impact survival and, you know, kind of going out there and and reading about it, but also with with going to educated sources to make sure that they don't skip treatments that are necessary that will impact their survival.

So that is such an important point and for the lay person the systemic issue versus um the kind of breast surgery issue you are

if there there's terms like invasive non-invasive that kind of thing. So there in my case for example all of the cancer was within the actual breast. So if you are then going if you have an invasive piece this means that it either is a threat that it could invade the rest of your body or it already has. And so this is why this like this this more systemic approach where you go to the oncologist and you say I need chemo. I need whatever I need because you're preventing what originated in the breast from taking over the rest of the body. So to kind of clarify, so your your breast main purpose is for breastfeeding and you have ducts which are little like highways. Imagine um little highways kind of like I95 and then has little streets that end in the lobules. The lobules are the infrastructure where milk is made. So when cancer is within the duct, which is the most common location for breast cancer to happen in

those little highways or little streets, that's ductal carcinoma. The incitu means that it hasn't broken through the that wall, that barrier. Okay, that barrier is called basement membrane, but it's really like the bricks in your house. And you had termites. The termites are within the wall. They haven't eaten up your walls. Um, invasive cancer doesn't mean that it's traveled anywhere. It does have the potential like Amanda said, but it just means that in that duct, that wall has been eaten up by cancer and has broken through the wall. And so and that the same thing can happen in the lobules where that lobular cells can break through the lobular wall and become invasive lobbular cancer which is less common. So one of the things that I tell patients is just the decision about surgery is an important one because it's a permanent one. Uh the decision about systemic disease treatment meaning

estrogen blockers um like some of you may have heard tmoxifen aromatase inhibitors they block estrogen. What does that do? It blocks your ability to feed the most common types of breast cancer which is usually the 80% of women get estrogen progesterone positive breast cancer which are two hormones. Uh in the lesser common are the ones that are her two positive estrogen progesterone negative and then the least common but it's the most aggressive is triple negative breast cancer. In those cases, those patients usually require chemotherapy and imunotherapy to treat them to decrease the cancer that is in the breast from potentially going anywhere else in the body. Like you said, now in patients when they see me, they're like, you know, everybody's wanting to take it all out. And I always tell them, half of your decision is now, half of your decision is when you see the medical oncologist. And because I do feel like

there's people that get decision fatigue and once they get to the medical oncologist because they've gone through like what you were mentioning, you know, how do you make a decision and then they're told to make other decisions um then they're faced with yet another decision to do and and some of them are like okay I've heard too much this is too much information and I think one of the one of the things that I always tell patients is first of all yes ask for what you want you know if you are able to get it make sure that you get it. um ask you know you know when Lori said that she had seen you and you know I think one of the things that I talk about is that you know a surgeon um operates the community heals

and um she found such peace by just hearing you and then realizing that you and I like knew each other. She like texted me that night. She's like, "Oh my god, um I can't believe that I'm like going through this and it's you and I feel so relieved." Not that she didn't feel relief before, but I think having that like finding her way in a place where she may have feel felt lost and finding someone who saw her and someone that she felt like was almost like a someone that took her in and said, you know, you're good, go do that. Um that community is also very important when patients are facing this decision exhaustion um you know unknown what to go like what your sister and uh and a Abby did like there's something wrong here you should go somewhere else you know and I see that often I see patients who their friends told them that wasn't like a good consultation maybe you should go and I have patients that I

tell them listen if you don't feel this is the right thing for you go somewhere else come I'll help you get an appointment because that's the second thing a lot of people can't get an appointment with someone if they call the regular. It may take them weeks and that again delays their care. So I'm always like, listen, I will hook you up with whoever. Who do you want to go see? Pick a name. I will call them, get an appointment so that you can go see them and get a second opinion and get more empowered with your own decision. You know, I always say this is this is your body. You're you ultimately make the decision about everything, by the way, about about from the beginning till the end. And we're just here to guide you, to make you feel like you're you're heard, you're listen, and that we're giving you what you want. ultimately making sure that obviously it's oncologically safe and feasible.

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when it counts, send money with Zel. Let's talk about the direct implant because that is very uncommon. Um only 11% of the country does that.

Okay. So, let me give the lay person's experience of what people might hear. So the the first several doctors I went to, this is how it was described to me. Okay, we're going to go in, we're going to do the masectomies, meaning you're they're taking away the breast tissue. Then you're going to go home and recover from that. And you will have because I wanted you also can have, you know, flat. You can just go um with flat um which is they call a flat closure. You can go

no reconstruction just flat closure for reconstruction right you no reconstruction just flat but I wanted to have reconstruction. So assuming you want to have reconstruction then they have to prepare for the reconstruction by having oh my god what are they called inserts

expanders. So then the you they can't just leave your skin by itself. So they put like some expanders under your skin which are not your not going to be your permanent breasts but just like temporary balloonish things.

They are plastic balloons that are pl they literally are plastic balloons silicone kind of and they put it in

silicone. Okay. I haven't seen one in many years so I can't show off. You're like I haven't seen that in years. Okay. So the expanders go in and that that is your body preparing for the second surgery which is the actual reconstruction where then they go in they take out the expanders. They put in the implants if that's what you're doing or there's also other options. They can take body fat from the rest of your body and um do your reconstruction that way. So that was how everyone explained it to me until I got to you. So I want to I want you to tell the people about direct to reconstruction because basically that means this going home and recovering and coming back for another surgery is not a thing. I went in she did the mistctomies she and Dr. van did the reconstruction immediately all part of one surgery so that when I left that day I my breasts were gone my implants were in and I had one recovery so tell us about

this why don't a lot of people offer it who is candidates for it and why do you do it this way

so I think it's been an evolution of my practice when I first started we were doing like 50% implants, 50% tissue expanders, and then um I was at University of Pennsylvania, we did a lot of free flaps, meaning your own tissue reconstruction, like a tummy tuck. They take the tissue and put it in your breast. And we would also do those in single stage, meaning at the time of the cancer diagnosis, we do the mistctomy, we do the the free flap, okay, the your own tissue. Um and then I as I progressed in my career probably like my second third year I started to realize that it was unnecessary having the tissue expander. Actually my plastic surgeon said you know Lucy we should I'm going to stop putting tissue expanders because um your patients who we do implants on um they do fine. there's they haven't had issues and the tissue expander is a second surgery and it's really uncomfortable and I actually you

know I I felt like I didn't really have that I was taught that that's a decision that the plastic surgeon does not necessarily a breast surgeon can bring up and um so we stopped doing that in 201 18 we stop no it's 17 we stopped doing um I stopped in my my patients would were not getting tissue expanders they were having immed immediate reconstruction with direct to implant and I started to realize that patients recovery was much better obviously they don't have to pay second time to go around to have surgery for co-pays they don't have to take time off from work and so it was kind of an easy transition for me to come and say you know all of our patients are going to get direct to implant and um the only time that we would do delayed with the tissue expander at that time was patients who needed radiation

uh if they wanted to put the free flap, meaning your uh tummy tuck. We changed along the way because I said, "Wait, wait, we could put an implant in, they can get radiated, and then if they want to do a deep, they can do it whenever. They don't they don't have to be like, oh, have a tissue expander and go back right away. They can wait. There's more time for the skin to heal from radiation. The there's no contraindication for an implant to be radiated." actually it's kind of nice because it gives the the full expansion to the skin out towards the outside and the radiation oncologist can do their mapping and their planning appropriately. Um and so that's how the evolution of me kind of morphing into just simply our plastic surgeons offering direct implant. So I think one of the things that I would say is just I've pushed the envelope in my own clinical practice to get patients uh one surgery, one

recovery uh to minimize the trauma and make sure that I don't know one of the things that one of my patients said, you know, I I went in did surgery and I look back and I I don't have to go back in six months. I I have a scar that I can't see. Um I feel like, you know, I I like my breasts now better than I did before. they're bigger. Um, I had lost them with breastfeeding.

And every time I hear that, I feel like, you know, why not? Why not offer that to patients? And so, you know, I've been fortunate that my plastic surgeons um are on board and they're all about doing less surgery, less trauma, minimizing tissue handling,

and the emotional toll of like knowing that I was coming home from that surgery and being like, "This is my recovery."

Yeah. not I have to get through this recovery just to ramp up for another whole surgery and another whole recovery. It's a very different psychological experience, I'm sure, if you're like, well, this is the first this is the first marathon. I'm running another one next month. Like that's

and it's very hard. And I will tell you, it's very hard. I I like I said, I I was doing it in when I was a fellow. I was doing it when I was a resident. I did it being in my career. And um I think one of the things that I heard from patients was that um they felt like it was a lot to go through. And so even that's why we put implants on patients that are going to have deeps because we have patients that actually never come back to get their tummy tuck because they're like,

I look good. I feel good. I'm done. I have an implant. I don't have I don't want to have another second surgery. You know, when they first at the beginning came in with the idea of doing the tummy tuck,

right? And the tummy tuck thing y'all is that if people want to use their own tissue for their breast reconstruction as opposed to having um an implant often it can be taken from other parts of the body and that is called a deep tissue

reconstru uh procedure right deep which is deep inferior epigastric pedacle. It's essentially named after the vessel where you're harvesting the blood supply and the skin from to move it, but it's technically from the outside in. What you see is the tummy tuck incision because that's essentially what it is. We're removing the tissue that you would remove in a tummy tuck procedure, but with the connection to a vessel and we we reconnected to a vessel in the chest.

We have a large volume of patients that come for that as well um for that kind of reconstruction. the patients that don't want implants, but you have to be a candidate, right? Not everybody's a candidate for a a reconstruction. Some women are don't have enough tissue. Some women have way too much tissue. So, it's almost like you have to have like this perfect amount of um tummy to be able to preserve to be able to do the procedure uh and to be able to do the reconstruction using your own tissue. So, if I um if I'm someone listening to this and the direct to reconstruction one surgery option has not been offered to me, what are the reasons that could be true other than that surgeon doesn't do that or isn't skilled at that? Like I is are there people who are not candidates for that? And I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus. I'm trying to I'm trying to think I am a I am a cancer patient

who's who's awaiting surgery. I've talked to two surgeon. No one has mentioned direct to implant. And now I'm sitting here listening to this wondering why the hell not if that's an if that's available. So why wouldn't that be?

That's a good question. I think it just has to do with practice patterns and p you know what your practice is like and unp

okay. So they don't know how to do it is what you're saying. Um I think it's just like I said it's um you're being sweeter than I am. I'm like, "Those yahoos don't know how to do this. Y'all find someone who knows how to do it."

So, I think it's it's one of those things that there are two schools of thought. There's an old school of thought and then there's a younger school of thought. Like Anna Pellet in San Francisco does it every day. She just recently came out and said, "I have a breast cancer uh diagnosis after having cancer seven years ago." and she went on her social media and said, "I am having a bilateral nipple sparctomy with direct to implant with reensation of my nipple." And she is a breast cancer surgeon who does plastic surgery and does breast surgery.

If that is what she's having herself, yeah, and if I had breast cancer tomorrow and I needed to have a mastctomy, I would have direct implant. Hopefully, I'll have a little bit of deep, maybe I'll get a deep, but I don't think I will. Mostly because I wanted the tummy tuck to be done, but I don't think I will have that. and and then with the reensation because why not? Why not?

Okay, reensation y'all. This is the thing. Okay, so we need to talk about reensation because this is also something that will not be offered to you likely. Here is the bad news. When you need to have masectomies, I don't know if this is true of lumpctomies, but you tell me. The the one of the tragedies of that is that you are going to lose sensation on your skin of your breast and your nipples. So it will be like um like you have like you have anesthesia and you can put your hand on yourself and you know your hand's there because you can see it but you don't actually feel it. Like you don't feel the sensation.

And most doctors, by the way, won't even tell you this is going to happen. Literally, no one told me this was going to happen. No one said, "Oh, FYI, when you have your masectomies, you will lose any sensation around your breast whatsoever." This is this is the default which may or may not be disclosed to you. There is a world of folks like de la Cruz who are adamant that as a just baseline of care we should not accept that you will never have sensation on your skin or your nipples again. So they perform this reensation technique. Um tell us about that and tell us what's uh wrong with anything I said. No, everything is right. So, actually there was a New York Time article when I was probably beginning my career, if not my last year, my year in fellowship from New York Times that was saying a woman, there was a story about a woman who said uh something and that's kind of that pretty much what you explained, nobody

told me I would be numb. And it was in the New York Times. And I remember because my mentor who I just I've continue to bring up because she was so incredible at like engraving all these amazing pearls of wisdom that she had learned through her life. And I think us as mentors of the next generation, you know, should do the same. And some of my fellows say, "I still hear you screaming in my ear."

Like any good coach, it's because I'm like, you know, my voice is really loud. I'm Cuban, so I'm very articulate and ornate and animated. But um one of the things that she mentioned to me it was the she brought it up to me one day. She would counsel her patients about chest wall numbness. Now in that time we didn't do reensation. And then I remember reading that paper uh that article from the New York Times and having one of my patients said you know Dr. Deleuse you had told me about it. You had told me that I was going to have chest wall. This mind you this was in 2016. We were not doing reensation. I think it was around 2016 or 2015 that this article came out and obviously I didn't have anything to offer. And this was born out of Anna Pellet like I mentioned to her. She's a great pioneer in the reensation and she brought up this idea because she had treated thousands of women just like

myself and you know she hadn't been able to reconnect it and her husband is a peripheral nerve surgeon and um so anyway she started doing it. We talked about it one day and I was like I want to do that absolutely like I want to be like I want to be the first. I want to be the second actually because you're the first. I'll be the second and I was like we need to do this on everybody but insurance wasn't covering it. So insurance initially was saying

please just can I pause you for a second a moment a moment of misogyny that we like to have during this. Can you just freaking imagine a world in which something was going to happen to men's testicles?

Oh my god. Yes. And the standard of care was Okay. First of all, we don't even need to mention it that they're going to lose sensation in their testicles. It doesn't seem relevant to mention.

By the way, do you want me to really upset you? You know that they put direct implants to reconstruct or ectomy patients? So, they don't go around without a ball. They have like a little ball that they float right away.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay. So the whole thing where they said where like direct to implant on breasts is like this novel thing that very few people apparently do it is the standard of care.

I mean so I've heard forbid a man walk heard from that they did like an implant in by the way I was having this conversation this weekend in this round table and we were talking about direct to implant and you know we were asked to raise our hands who did direct implant and who didn't. uh in this room a lot of us did direct to implant um but we have very different practice patterns like we're from all over the country so it was very interesting to see where and when people are doing direct to implant versus not and in their practice and one of the one of the surgeons said yeah of course but let me remind you that orctomy patients get a reconstruction right away and we're here delaying the reconstruction of women and I was like oh I didn't know that that was that's actually a good point and so you're right I mean I think you know one of the things that um I think we have as a community of breast

cancer surgeons but also patients is that our voice we are getting louder and louder and I and I that's why I said thank you so much for your voice because women need to hear this. Women need to be educated about this. Women need to ask for better and more and you know explanations. There are patients who are coming in and asking questions like you did asking why not why should I what are the what is the science and the reasoning behind it. they don't just kind of stay with the answer and take that as a final answer. They go out there and they do their research. But for those that don't, one of the things that I say is make sure that if you leave from there and you feel like you haven't been given all the options, um you should go somewhere else and get more options that you feel are more in tune with you and aligned with your thought of what your plan should be as far as your outcomes.

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MIDI, the care women deserve. Can you tell us the actual process just briefly about reensation, how it works, and is this something that is still a major challenge to have covered by insurance? Because um because I can't imagine like you did the reensation for me. It wasn't even like you were like, "Oh, you're getting the reensation." I was like, "I don't know what that is, but that sounds real good. I'd like to have that.

Yeah. I don't think I gave you an option. It's like we do it for everybody. Yeah. Which is which it should be for everyone. If there is an option by which you can retain sensation of your sexual organs, it should not be only for those who know to ask the question, hey, can I retain sensation of my sexual organs?

So, it's interesting. A lot of this in a lot of this idea of preservation I think that surgery is moving away from radical surgery to more thoughtful surgery because patients are living longer because our systemic disease is better. Our I mean our systemic treatment is better. So patients are not dying of breast cancer as much as they were before and we have better treatments today. So, we need to make sure that the next 30, 40 years of life that they have, they're good years of life. That you can continue to be the person that you are by, you know, getting getting dressed in the morning and not thinking about the cancer that you had that changed your life completely, but that you had cancer and that you survived it and that you're able to do everything you want to do. Nothing is stopping you from doing that. And so I think one of the things that reensation provides, it's not a perfect science like nothing

in medicine is, but it gives you the most the the closest thing to potentially regaining that sensation. So that when you get dressed, when you're blow drying your hair and doing a curling iron and your iron falls, you burn yourself and you don't realize that you did that you can actually say, "Oh my god, I burned myself." And and and take care of it. Because some people may not even notice I got burned. I've had patients who burned themselves have burned themselves with curling iron and they they didn't realize they had a burn in their chest or they fell asleep with a heating pad and they had third degree burn. And so these are things that I know I mean these are things that can happen, right? But the most important thing I have patients like I want to feel my kids hug me again.

I want to feel my husband caress my breast again. And these are things that matter to me. I'm a mom. I have a partner. I want to be able to feel fully as a woman or at least be given the opportunity because as I mentioned it's not a perfect science but if I am not giving you that opportunity then it's a zero science versus the percent of patients that do regain sensation and so I think one of the things that we're trying to do I mean my definitely all my fellows get trained when they leave they're able to provide it to patients so usually what we do is when we're in the operating room we find the nerve there's a there's a nerve that goes directly from your chest wall to your nipple. That's usually a branch of the T4. So meaning the level of the thoracic so the spine level four which intervates this area here. We try to preserve so this is what the structural mastctomy is. We try to preserve the um they're called something

called in perforators meaning the vessels that provide blood supply to your skin. If you if you impact those vessels they're like the main highway of blood uh supply to your skin. If you hit those vessels, you can actually hurt the blood supply and potentially cause something called necrosis. So when we're in the operating room,

which means the skin basically dies. The skin dies. Okay. So when we're in the operating room, I'm very thoughtful to look for those perforators and preserve them. Right next to the perforators are usually superficial nerves that if we don't touch, you will regain s I mean retain sensation on the lateral portion. Okay. On this area here. Okay. And then right under your armpit.

Yes. And there are perforators that come here that you can see them. If you avoid them and you don't hurt them, you then allow some of the nerve like superficial nerves to stay up here in this area. Okay.

Right above your breast. Yes. We're not leaving tissue behind. We're preserving the breast like blood supply and we're taking the breast in its capsule around it. Okay. The breast has a capsule almost like a little um when you see it, you can't unsee it. It's almost like a way that it your the body differentiates subcutaneous fat from breast tissue and it almost peels off when you're in the correct plane. When you see that, you'll see usually the blood vessels and that's what the structural mctomy that we perform at Georgetown is. It's really creating the perfect plane of dissection, preserving the blood supply, not by preserving breast tissue, but really preserving the blood supply that irrigates or provides blood supply to the skin, the nipple, and the lateral and the medial, the medial portion will preserve the sensation. The the nipple in sensation we can't preserve because obviously we

have to cut through. And so what we do is we find the nerve in the chest wall. And when we find it, we cut through it, cut it, mark it, and then the plastic surgeon comes with a nerve graft. That's what the insurance pays for, the nerve graft, which is a CAD cadaavveric graft from somebody who's donated to science or or to us.

And we connect it to the nipple and it the nerve itself will try to find its match. So the moment that the nerve that we've preserved that the the stump keeps on firing they're called synaptic uh signals meaning it's sending in the brain it wants to find its it I call it always the um it's um soulmate it's trying to find it soulmate so it's calling out for soulmate and then eventually it reconnects but it takes usually between a year to two years for you to regain the full sensation that you're going to have after surgery so it's not a process that happens right away but I have patients who have done it and they're like you know I have sensation pretty quickly. And then I have patients that are like, you know, at two years they're they're but they're able to feel they're able to have sensations. Is it completely 100% perfect? No. I have patients that have a spot here that say, you know, I have

never really regained sensation there, but I do feel in my nipple or I have, you know, a little area here that's like a a numb patch.

But in most cases, patients are able to have some sensation that prevents them from getting burnt, from getting cold. You know some patients put ice or anything. I always tell them don't put ice. Don't put heating pad because if you don't have sensation you can burn yourself. And so that's why to me when this was able to be done and now that insurance most of the insurance cover it right now. There are a couple of insurers that don't cover it. There always are. Um but what we try to do is um offer it to everybody. We do the pre-approval process. We submit it. I've had some patients who have even gotten it even if the insurance doesn't cover it. to submit like a special um request for it um and then try to do it.

Well, I have full skin. I I as of like two weeks after every part of my skin full sensation.

Well, you also have like no subcutaneous fat. So, that's very good because you have

So, that's like a double extra for you. No. And I have some Yeah, that's like a that's a good thing. Put it on your really good thing. By the way, Amanda, a lot of our patients do have sensation, you know. Yeah,

they have more sensation than if they would have never. And by the way, it takes 15 extra minutes of our lives. 15 extra minutes to give you a whole life of feeling. How about that? I tell people all the time, my patients come through not through the central scheduling. They come through social media. They come through uh friends of my patients. That is I have a a grassroots approach to my clinical practice. And I think if we continue talking about it and opening the conversation with women like myself and Anne Pellet who talk about it all the time, we we try to educate women. I think the next generation of women who get breast cancer will be a different story. They will all be offered all the options, the bells and whistles like I call them of breast cancer treatment as far as surgery goes, which they deserve.

And so I think one of the things that I am very happy about is that we the next generation of breast surgeons are learning that. But I think in the next 10 years it's going to be you know it's going to be a significant progress because a lot of people are talking about direct to implant. We looked at the data only 11% of institutions do direct to implant in the country.

11%. 11%. And the revision rates are up to 50%. Meaning the amount of surgery women need to have after mastctomy is up to 50% of the time they're getting like revisions per

is that a question you would ask a surgeon what is your revision rate? Um I would ask so I think one of the things that you know when we talk to plastic surgeons when they do a deep for example um we always have patients say well how many deeps do you guys do here a year and I think it's valid question to ask your surgeon how many nipple spammctomies do they do how often do they do direct to implant what is their nipple necrosis rate which is another option another question to ask because these are based on outcomes and you know most of us know our outcomes and we should know our outcomes if we're having a high rate of nipple loss because if they nipple dies then that's something that we should know right and so those are questions that are valid questions um you know the reconstruction why you do one to versus two stage again I told you the minority of people we're going to are going to have that discussion and

be told tissue expanders so go to a place where they do direct implants that if you would live near a place or if you can travel somewhere where there is direct to implant I I would highly recommend it because you're having one surgery less. Um the other thing is as far as the um the experience of the surgeon doing nipple spar mistctomies, right? We do nipple sperm mistctomies I don't know 98% of the time in patients and I'm not just talking about the nipple sperm mistctomy of a small breast. I'm talking about that complex nipple spam mistctomy that I told you about that women who have really large breasts who come to us because they have been told that they cannot keep their nipples because their body habitous and their breasts are big. And so we offer that we offer that to these women and I'll tell you they're very happy because they're getting you know a reduction a lift and a mistctomy all at once with

one surgery and we do it all the time. So, it's very satisfying to see these women and to see all women that are able to get reconstruction and feel whole right after surgery. Like two weeks after surgery they're

Oh, two weeks after surgery, I was like, "Oh, you wanted to work out." You were like, "I'm ready to work out."

Let's be Let's be clear, dear Chris. I haven't worked out in 5 years. I was I was doing my regular life.

Oh, that's what you were wanting. You were like, "Can I be active?" I was like, "I don't know what I think. Maybe I may have confused you with another one of my patients who was like texting me at 10 days. My drains are putting out 20 cc's. Can I do yoga with the drains? I was like, "No, you cannot do yoga with the drains."

Give it a beat. That wasn't me. It wasn't. Okay. It wasn't you then. Well, she reminded me of you because she was like very like I'm ready to go. I'm like, "Listen, you have to stop doing what you're doing. Like you're like doing all these things." She's like, "But I'm home." I'm like,

I love it. Okay. I just want to make sure because we've talked for so long about nipple sparing. I just want to put I just want to say something in regular people words and you tell me if this is right. So in my case my um by all the scans it seemed like my cancer was so close to the nipple that the assumption was you will have to lose that nipple because we are worried that the cancer is going to bleed into the nipple and therefore you'll have to lose it. Your approach was and that so it was kind of preemptive. It was like, "That was the assumption. It's preemptive. We're not going to be able to keep it." Your approach was, "You're right. We might not be able to keep it, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to go in.

We're going to do the surgery. We're going to take out the breast tissue. Then we're going to do the analysis of the pathology of the tissue that is closest to the nipple. And this is where a lot of these words come. We hear about margins." It's like they take the the they take little slices of the tissue that are closest to the nipple or to whatever area you're worried about. And in our case, we're talking about nipple sparing. So, closest to the nipple. And they put it under a microscope and they say, "Okay, look, here's where the cancer ended. How much space do we have between where the cancer ended and the tissue that we cut off?" So in other words, if that cancer went all the way up to the edge, that is too scary of a risk that it has already infiltrated the nipple. Or is there enough margin, and that's where the word margin comes from, is there enough margin there that we see a wide enough gap between where the

cancer ended and where we cut this tissue to know that it didn't jump to the nipple and therefore you can keep your nipple. So your approach was instead of prevent preemptively going in and taking it, we're going to wait

and see what the pathology says. We're going to look at the data after the case because we can always if those margins look murky and dangerous, take your nipple after the fact rather than take it preemptively. And in my case, my margins were clean and that's why I got to keep my nipple.

Absolutely. Is that correct? Absolutely. Yes. So, I assume everybody's innocent until proven guilty.

Thank you. What did my nipples ever do to you? I know. So, all nipples are innocent until proven guilty. If they're guilty, they're go. That's what it is. That's literally my theory because I will tell you, I have had in the last couple of months, I've had a couple of patients like that. And one of them had stopped lactating for months. I would say like over I think it was like about 11 months. And when I went in there, the the MRI had shown stuff towards the nipple. When I went in there, there was still breast milk. And she I was very surprised because she had stopped breastfeeding for 11 months and there shouldn't be that much milk, but there was a lot of milk. And when I went back in the pathology, it there was all the lactational changes that were going to the nipple. It wasn't cancer. Her cancer was in the upper inner quadrant of her breast. And when I reviewed it with one of the one of her other physicians who

saw her after for treatment, she questioned that. She goes, "We did a nipple sparasectomy and she had area of MRI." I said, "Listen, I have reviewed this pathology with with the pathologist. They're all lactic. I mean, there was milk everywhere when I was operating on her." So, yeah.

So, they thought the milk was cancer, so they were going to get rid of changes. So, there was a lot of like fibrous tissue that was in the breast from her having breastfed along with milk that I found in the operating room. But what my point is that not everything that is picked up on the MRI is cancer, right? And so if we assume that all of these women have nipple at a cancer at the nipple, which is not the most common location of breast cancer, most common breast cancers appear in the upper outer quadrant of the breast, then we are taking unnecessarily these nipples.

And does that is that because that goes to my last question about innocent until proven guilty. Is that how you feel about the sentininal lymph node?

Oh, for the detail. Yes. No. So let me just I can answer this very quickly or very specifically. So in olden days we used to remove lymphos for anybody undergoing mastctomy if they have

okay. So lymph nodes are right under your armpit. The idea is the road travels cancer would travel directly from your breast. Its first stop would be the lymph nodes. The lymph nodes would feed it to the rest of your body. So super scared of it being in the lymph nodes because that is how it's going to go systemically to the rest of your body.

Exactly. And so for DCIS which is stage zero breast cancer it is not crossed the barrier as I mentioned before it's all within the milk duct those cancers have very very very very low low likelihood of going anywhere and therefore the likelihood of them going to the lymph node is really irrelevant like we don't need to sample lymph nodes we use we never limp sample lymph nodes for uh patients would be I'm not going to say never never is a strong word But we usually don't sample lymph nodes for DCIS under a lumpctomy. We'll get a lumpctomy because if they have invasive cancer, we could always go back and do a lymph node because all the road maps, all the roads have been, you know, they are preserved. But when we do the mastctomy, we remove 98% of the breast tissue including breast lymphatics meaning the lymphatic drainage to the axilla. So the breast is a gland that drains all their lymphatic system which

is the way that we clean infection and we clean out our immunity is to the axilla. So if the patient doesn't need to have lymph nodes removed we try to avoid it because there's a risk of arm swelling or lympadeema that's 5%. Lympadeema may be permanent. So once you have it you may not get rid of it. Uh you could only treat it. Okay. So, one of the things that we use at Georgetown is this uh technique called mag trace. Mag trace is an injection that is a small particle of a of a metal part, not metal, but it's a fluid that has a small particle that is capable of traveling through these tiny little channels of lymphatic and kind of lodging themselves into the lowest lymph node of your lymphatic chain or lymphatic I call it like a like um like the the grapes of a vine. The lowest one is the one that we're trying to pick up with these with this injection

because that would be the first place the cancer would go go. Yes. So then we stain it with this mag trace which is an injection that we do when you're asleep. You're not awake. You don't have any pain from it. You don't have to go anywhere to get it done. You get it in the operating room. Uh and also we do the same for like when we do lymph node surgery. We do the injection in the operating room when you're asleep. So you don't have to be awake for it. You don't have to be injecting your nipple, you know, while you're awake, which is really uncomfortable, even though people say that it doesn't hurt. I would say those are men that say it doesn't hurt because it's not being done to their nipple. But we do it in the operating room. So, we do that. We stain the lymph nodes. And again, like I told you, Amanda, if it comes back that you have invasive cancer, we'll go back and take out lymph nodes. But why do an operation that you

may never need? Since we've started using the mags trace, we've saved 95% of women having lymph node surgery for DCIS after mastctomy. That's literally one in 10 women or 0.5 women every 10 women saved them like needed it. So imagine removing 95% of lymphs that never needed to be removed or one out of you know nine 10 out of 10 women instead of removing one out of 10 women that actually need that lymph node information. And actually there's now new clinical trials that show that if you qualify again ask your doctor but not everybody with a a very early stage breast cancer may even need a sentininal lymph no biopsy. It's called the sound trial. Again these are very much nichy things. I want you to discuss it with your doctor. Still the standard of care is to getting a lymph node if you have invasive cancer. Uh for DCIS if you have a mastctomy we recommend that you use mag trace injection which is okay for a

del sentininal lymph niopsy if you so if you have DCS your your lymph nodes are also innocent until proven guilty.

Exactly. So we are going to put the dye in. So we have tagged them. If they are guilty we are ready to take them in. Okay. But we're going to let them be innocent until we know we have an invasive element and that will save you because honestly my lymph node biopsy was

terrible like it it it didn't it wasn't great. So don't mess with them if you don't have

the armpit after surgery. Uh some people develop hoarding. Um some people you know like I said you can develop lympadeema. So it's not a naive procedure to just do a simple simp lymph node and remove it. um you know I don't want anything removed from my body if I don't have to have it removed and lymph nodes are one of those things that for DCIS with mastctomy using the mag trace injection to map the lymph nodes for a delayed sentininal lymph biopsy has been really uh changing in our practice practice changing for for all of us at Georgetown

da cruz we love you you're probably late for another surgery I'm so I have patients in clinic who showed up

oh my god go I love you I'm grateful for you you're the best. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for real Amanda. Thank you. And I'll tell Dr. Fan that you say hi.

Oh, please do. I love it. Bye. Love you. Take care. Bye. Bye. We can do hard things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at we can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on Tik Tok.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz"?

Glennon Doyle (Host), Amanda (Guest), Dr. Lucy De La Cruz (Guest).

What is "Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz" about?

The discussion centers around Amanda's personal experience with breast cancer and the importance of openly sharing her journey to inspire others to advocate for their own health. The conversation highlights the life-saving impact of Amanda's transparency, showing how her story has motivated others to seek medical attention and become proactive in their health, especially during Breast Cancer…

What is mentioned in this We Can Do Hard Things episode?

10 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Amazon Amanda, Dr. Lucy M. De la Cruz, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Glennon, Anna Pellet, Jen Hatmaker. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Life-Saving Intel: Amanda's Breast Cancer Surgeon Dr. Lucy De La Cruz"?

The episode runs 1 h 46 min; the transcript is about 19,081 words in 224 timestamped sections.

More from We Can Do Hard Things

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 15, 2026.