The day after I discovered I had breast cancer, I attended a fundraising gala with more than 350 people. I was there as a chief of the group, with tasks to fulfill and people anticipating to see me. Most of them had no concept what I had just been informed.
I knew how to stroll into that room. I had spent years doing it. What I did not know was how to stroll into it carrying a cancer diagnosis.
For more than twenty years, my work in radio has required me to use my personal energy and voice. Today, I host Conversations on the Block on Audacy’s 94.7 FM, also I serve as Chief Administrative Officer at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation and educate as an adjunct professor at St John’s University, and Westchester Community College. I am also a spouse, mom and grandmother. My days are full, and I take pleasure in being someone others can rely on.
But being reliable had become so acquainted that I virtually put off something I needed for myself: my mammogram.
In late 2025, I was balancing government tasks, my radio show and the closing weeks of the semester at St. John’s University. There was always something to end. Another appointment could simply become another factor to transfer on the calendar. Yet something inside me stored telling me to make this one.
Thank God I listened.
I had not felt a lump. I had no apparent motive to think anything was mistaken. In truth, I felt great. I was at my very best weight and felt stunning and assured in my physique. Nothing about how I appeared or felt advised that I had breast cancer.
Then the mammogram came back irregular, and a biopsy adopted. I couldn’t even course of a thought behind a detrimental biopsy. Then, while I was at work, I acquired the call: stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma.
I was accustomed to making selections, asking questions and serving to people work through troublesome conditions. Now I was making an attempt to perceive phrases that had instantly become about my own physique. There is a specific helplessness in realizing how to handle so much of your life and having no expertise with the factor that has just modified it.
I made an appointment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. From my first go to, my doctor helped me really feel secure. She defined what was taking place and reassured me. I needed medical experience, but I also needed someone to acknowledge how frightened I was. That reassurance grew to become my lifeline.
Still, I stored my diagnosis personal at work for a while. I continued with my tasks. The gala went ahead, and so did I.
I have requested myself what was behind that choice. Some of it was my want for normalcy. Work was acquainted; cancer was not. Some of it may have been shock. But there was also a worry I did not need to admit: I did not need people to see me otherwise.
Would they query my skill to lead? Would they start wanting for indicators that I could no longer carry out? I had labored arduous to earn my place, and I anxious that disclosing my diagnosis might change the approach people understood my competence.
As a Black lady in management, I know how much can sit behind the expectation that you will be composed and succesful. You become used to being prepared, being accessible and figuring issues out. It can be troublesome to say that you are scared when people are accustomed to coming to you for reassurance.
I anxious that if I shared my diagnosis with my colleagues and management that day, it would solid a shadow over our greatest occasion of the 12 months. So, I stored it to myself, carrying information that had modified my life while serving to everyone else rejoice. Much of that stress was coming from me. I was making an attempt to shield the model of Patricia that people knew, even as I was struggling to perceive what Patricia needed.
In December, I had surgical procedure to take away the tumor. The next day, I attended our company vacation get together. It wasn’t even 24 hours post-surgery, I was swollen and numb, and my husband didn’t perceive my logic. However, in my thoughts, I was celebrating that the tumor was out of my physique. Looking back, I can acknowledge the aid, shock and the adrenaline in that alternative. I can also acknowledge that persevering with to seem at work did not inform the entire story of how I was doing.
I went on to radiation for 1 week, which usually is a 13 week course of, but my tumor was so small I was a distinctive case that only required partial radiation. I counted the minutes in every day until I got to “the ringing of the bell”. I went to work with such glee and freedom.
Then came another scare. After finishing radiation and ringing the bell, I seen a new lump and returned to Memorial Sloan Kettering for further testing. I needed another biopsy when I had barely healed from surgical procedure. I had hardly begun to soak up the aid of ending therapy before I was dealing with uncertainty again, and I felt as though my mental health was collapsing under the weight of it all. A specialist greeted me with compassion and introduced my pathology and case to a medical board for review. Ultimately, they decided that the lump was not cancerous. It was tissue remaining from my initial surgical procedure. The aid was overwhelming, but so was the emotional toll of dealing with that risk again.
The aid was huge. So was the reminder that a particular person can be sitting in a assembly, answering questions and planning while privately ready for information that could change everything.
When I finally informed my colleagues, they were shocked. They had seen me at work all through it all, no days off. Their response helped me perceive how little my outward look had revealed.
Eventually, I shared my expertise in a video on Instagram. That was a completely different form of publicity from anything I had carried out professionally. On the radio, I usually help other people inform their tales. This time, I was letting people hear something I was still dwelling through.
The support that adopted was shifting. It also made me think more fastidiously about the platform I had spent years building. If I could discuss brazenly about virtually suspending my mammogram, perhaps another lady would acknowledge herself in that choice and keep her appointment.
My connection with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation gave me more alternatives to communicate, including a webinar and a go to to a BCRF-funded analysis lab at Weill Cornell Medicine. Looking at cancer cells under a microscope and listening to researchers clarify their work made analysis personal in a new approach. Behind the care I acquired were people asking troublesome questions and working toward higher solutions for sufferers they might never meet.
I need to help carry those conversations into our communities, particularly among Black girls. I need us to really feel snug asking a physician to clarify something again. I need us to observe up when something issues us and to give our health appointments the consideration we give our skilled commitments.
I am still formidable. I still care deeply about my work. I am also still taking remedy for 10 years and studying what life after therapy means for me. Sharing my expertise has allowed more of that actuality to exist alongside my public life.
When I say I survived because I took a step, I am pondering about that appointment I virtually postponed. It led to the mammogram, the biopsy and the discovery of my cancer at stage 1. Then I took the next steps with my medical workforce. I am grateful for the therapy and analysis that made my care attainable, and grateful that I gave myself the likelihood to obtain it.
That is what I need another lady to hear. You do not have to end everything on your listing before you make room for your health. Make the appointment. Keep it. Ask the questions you need answered. Let someone know when you need support.
I constructed my profession studying how to take huge steps. The step that may have saved my life was one I virtually postponed.
This time, I confirmed up for myself.
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