Clinical Cancer Research Gave Me Options
This story was written for Patient Action for Cancer Research in partnership with Kay.
Kay, 60, remembered getting the call on a Friday afternoon—the day before her daughter’s baby shower.
The Connecticut mother would have had her mammogram months earlier, but like many people during COVID, she had put the appointment on the back burner. Then she felt a lump on her breast.
When Kay received the phone call with the bad news, “I just remember getting the call and going, I can't ruin the shower. When I walked it back in the door, my girls were there. I just always vividly remember this. And they just look at me, what happened?”
Kay’s husband was a physician, at the time head of the family practice at Yale. Within a day, Kay was working with oncologist Dr. Eric Winer, the director of Yale Cancer Center, a national cancer institute designated comprehensive cancer center. Chemotherapy began five days later. “I kind of got the white glove treatment there,” Kay said, remarking on the speed and focus on her treatment.
She was diagnosed with Stage 2, HER2-positive breast cancer. Because her tumor expressed the HER2 receptor, she wasn’t eligible for hormonal therapy—but she was a candidate for targeted therapy, drugs designed to attack cancer cells with more specificity than traditional chemotherapy. Kay said the response was almost immediate. Within the first few treatments, her tumor began to shrink.
At Yale, she found herself buoyed not just by medical expertise, but by the people who delivered it. “The nurses and physicians were so kind,” she says. “Nurses really are a special breed—they lift you up even when you feel awful.” She credits them not just with administering care, but with making the hardest days bearable.
Even as her own treatment progressed successfully, the environment around her was sobering. Sitting in infusion rooms, Kay saw young women, parents of newborns, people from every walk of life receiving treatment side by side. The scale of it stunned her: a dozen bays, four patients each, constant turnover—and that was just breast cancer, in one relatively small place in Connecticut. “It was mind-boggling,” she says.
Over time, patients began to recognize one another. Treatment schedules aligned.
During radiation, Kay went every morning at 8 a.m. and saw the same group. There was a man with prostate cancer she nicknamed “Prostate Bob.” He called her “Breast K.” They checked in on each other. That informal community—born of routine, vulnerability, and shared fear—helped carry her through. “The people around you really help you get through it,” she says.
Treatment stretched on for more than a year: chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, followed by targeted shots every other week. Kay’s last shot came in December 2023.
“It took about a year before I started feeling better,” she said. But she continued to live with fatigue and loss of muscle mass. Psychologically, the impact arrived late. “You’re in survival mode during treatment,” she explained. “Afterward, you look back and think, ‘what just happened to me?’”
But the experience also changed her outlook. “I don’t take things for granted anymore,” she says. “I enjoy life more. I try new things. I’m more adventurous.”
One of her daughters was home during treatment and went to appointments with her, helping track details when chemo brain made memory unreliable. Kay can’t imagine getting through it without her family. Yet she was equally struck by patients who did. “So many people were alone, taking the bus to treatment,” she says. “It really does take a village.”
Kay wasn’t enrolled in a clinical trial herself, but the targeted therapy she received was developed through years of clinical research.
Today, her prognosis remains good. Mammograms still make her nervous, but so far, everything is clear. Kay is retired now—on what she jokingly calls a “sabbatical forever.” She spends her days in her pottery studio, babysitting her grandchildren, and being with family and friends. “I have a really nice life now,” she said.
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