My name is Cecilia, I’m 47 years old. I’m married to Ghazel and we have two young girls, Maya 17 and Nora, 14.
I’m a Breast Cancer Survivor. It’s incredible how this disease changed me and gave birth to a better and stronger 2.0 version. I do not say it was an “amazing” adventure every day, but I can promise you that there are so many great and incredible moments, some you discover by yourself, some because someone tells you what to do. And today, it has become my Purpose.
If you read my previous blogs, we know each other a little bit better by now and I can move on to the next steps with and for you my friends and heroes.
I would do anything to turn back time, make a few different choices. Why? Because no one told me that I was actually the key actor in my breast care journey, that I could challenge my care providers and the journey I was about to live. I know I’ve been in between expert hands and I trusted that I had the best of the best. But now, with the breast cancer behind me, I can take a look at my journey from the other side with other perspective and lenses.
Remember from a previous post, what my journey looked like: Approximately 15 interventions, (most of them impacting me deeply both physically and mentally). 6 Cell therapy, 30 radiotherapy, 5 years of hormonal therapy, approximatively 270 appointments, thousands of euros of non-planned expenses, 3000 km of travelling between sites and treatments, 9 different medical technologies used, dispatched on 8 different sites. I also have doubts on the fact that my cancer was missed. I went to the first site I found on google and I truly regret. I will not point the finger at any technology or site, but I’ll focus on patient experience and what we deserve as woman, men and patients and what we can seek for if we have the choice.
Depending on where we live, we have no choice and the health system is set up and organized in such way that you can’t chose, unless you are prepared to pay quite some extra money. Or you can indeed choose, public or private, where and with whom. You can even look for a particular machine or technology you’ve heard about because it provides great patient experience.
Because we’re not experts in technology, we tend to do as I did, google and then off we go.
But I want to tell everyone, that if you have a choice, then you can actually check out technology, compare sites and read comments about doctors etc. You can become a “consumer” if I may express it like this for diagnostic imaging.
When you go to a gynecologist control for example, you’ll make sure to choose one that has the reputation of being gentle, clean. It’s the same for any other exam, such a mammogram, why not set a few expectations here as well?
Woman don’t realize, or realize too late, the importance of a mammogram. Once decided, they might do as I did, open up google and take any on the list. Perhaps you have positive results, meaning no cancer, you don’t care, and your mammogram was a one-off event that you forget the day after.
But in case you have poor results, meaning a breast cancer was detected, then you’ll regret your choice maybe. It’s a natural chain reaction, we start to seek for the reasons for having caught a cancer.
So, I want to help you to eliminate a few doubts.
Technology & image quality: Check it all out before and compare! Ask your friends and family, seek out the best on the internet. You might think that they are all the same, but it’s only true to some extent.
There are some key differentiators, and those lies in:
- Examination comfort and technology. Seek for the “Made by Women for Women” and where you can manage breast compression under technologist supervision. You can take control!
- Welcoming you: Did you feel they helped you to facilitate the appointment, maybe by texting you to confirm the exam still is taking place? Maybe indicate of any delay and also indicate where the device is located (floor, signage) and maybe even some educational material now that we need to live with fears of COVID-19 virus.
- Waiting time: Do they care for you whilst you’re waiting in a caring environment, exploring your senses with educational tools or videos, availability of magazines that are not outdated. Same day results. Maybe the clinic or care area has a gym you can use for some workout whilst waiting. If you suffer from a decease, is there a known care space or community, supportive volunteers, to chat and help out maybe to delete fears and questions.
- Empathy: Health care provider’s affect and respect towards patient experience. Meaning they see you as a woman or a man, not as a disease within an operational flow.
The differences are easily spotted during the discussions you’re having with the technologist staff, how they talk to you, how they show they know who you are and where you are in your journey. How they position you on a machine, explaining the why & the how of the exam.
- Educational and informational tools and content: A breast care journey starts before and after the exam, how does the site include that in their Patient Experience, how do they arm us to face our own journeys and tell us all we need to know.
- Logistics: How do they prevent you from a journey like mine? Less steps, less machines, less interlocutors, more under the same roof, one stop clinics, IF you were to undergo the complete set of exams such as a mammogram, biopsy, contrast enhanced mammograms, and then maybe treatments etc.
My purpose here is to say that if you have the choice, make time to check out what exists for Patient Experience in mammography.
You’ll need the best from the start, like a safe harbor. It’s key for any stage that you’re in whether it’s for screening, diagnostics or post-surgery! Also, the day you’ll be in remission, you’ll still need regular control so…
Make sure you chose the best, because you’ll need it and because you deserve it.
You’re all heroes!
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