At Mount Sinai, breast cancer survivors share their stories

Both Susan Blaize-Sampeur and Geri Barish got that dreaded phone call from their doctors: The diagnosis was breast cancer. It happened to Blaize-Sampeur last year, and no fewer than three times for Barish, first in 1985 and most recently in 2015. Both shared their testimonies of hope and recovery at Mount Sinai South Nassau on Oct. 13, accompanied by the doctors who led the way to healing. 

Blaize-Sampeur remembers the day she was diagnosed. Late last September, when she saw her doctor for her regular mammogram, she wasn’t told the usual, “You’re good to go till next year.” Instead, the doctor said she needed to come back for a biopsy, which she did, and then went back home to Lynbrook.

“The waiting period is always stressful, and two weeks later, on Oct. 11, I got that dreadful call that I had breast cancer,” Blaize-Sampeur recounted. “The doctor did assure me that he felt that I’d be OK, because it was small.”

After a quick surgery at Mount Sinai, the mass was gone. “The journey from the beginning to the end was amazing,” she said. “The doctors here at Mount Sinai, they’re so wonderful — the care I received, it was just amazing. The care of Mount Sinai, and my daughter, who stood by me every step of the way,” were what made the difference, Blaize-Sampeur said.

Breast cancer is more common in Black women under age 45 than white women, and overall, Black women are more likely to die of the disease. Blaize-Sampeur benefited from early detection and regular checkups. “If I procrastinated and waited another year or two,” she said, her voice filled with emotion as she looked at her daughter, Franchesca, “I don’t know if I would even be sitting here.”

Franchesca, who was part of the discussion panel in addition to two doctors, her mother and Barish, stressed the importance of members of the Black community supporting, educating and advocate for one another. “It’s also something that impacts the people around that individual — their friends, their family, the communities that they’re a part of,” she said.

And with places like Mount Sinai, whose Center for Women’s Imaging is offering free breast cancer screenings through Oct. 23, Franchesca urged women to make the most of such opportunities. “With programs that are available through places like Mount Sinai,” she said, “… I encourage people in all communities, but especially those that are highly impacted, like the Black community, to take advantage of those resources.”

Blaize-Sampeur told her daughter that her advice for fighting cancer, based on her experience, would be to get regular checkups. “I would say early detection is so important,” she said, “because had I not gone in … every year to have my mammogram, I would have been one of the statistics I’m sure that would have ended up with Stage 4 (cancer).”

An old hand with cancer

Barish’s cancer journey was quite different. Starting in the 1980s and with her most recent diagnosis in 2015, she has seen medical technology advance and more awareness of environmental factors. “When we started in the late ’80s, no one knew anything about genetics — no one even talked about it,” she said. “Here on Long Island, we wanted to study … breast cancer because we were the only state that had the most open waste sites in any one place in any one state.”

Barish, who is president of the Hewlett House and the 1 in 9 Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition, has been fighting and educating for over 40 years. “We started from scratch,” she said. “We knew nothing about the power plants from Connecticut and Long Island and the plumes that came across. We knew nothing about pesticides and chemicals in the ingredients, but we learned, and we taught people.” But she added, “Even though we’ve come so far, we need to do more outreach. We need to get our families involved.”

Now, women who go to a doctor to get tested deal with the lingering fear of the coronavirus pandemic. Barish, saddened by the fact that women are not getting tested as much as usual, said we’ve gone back “into the Dark Ages,” with women seeking answers on the internet rather than from their doctors, which she warned about. “The only one you should be consulting is your doctor,” Barish said.

In her own experience, she has seen “people who come in, and they talk about their family members, and they’re afraid to go to the doctor,” she said. “They’re afraid to go with a screening therapy, to go for mammography, because they’re afraid to walk into a hospital or go into a doctor’s office. These are things we can do. We have the facilities and technology; we can take care of that.”

Above all, Barish said, “You can’t let fear take over you. Look at your kids’ faces. Look at yourself in the mirror and go, ‘Am I going to sit home and wait until it’s too late?’ I am a very proud patient of this hospital and the doctors here. That’s why I’m still sitting here.”

Dr. Mindy Scheer, a diagnostic radiologist and Mount Sinai’s director of diagnostic breast imaging, told of how technology can now create a “more personalized plan” to treat each patient.

“Because many patients have different risk factors, we recommend they start early mammography at the age of 40 and come in every single year,” Scheer said. “That changes if the patient’s intermediate or high risk, as high-risk patients have a strong family history, have genetic predispositions. With this genetic testing, we’ve become more aware of many more genes now that put them at high risk, and some patients have a personal history and need to come in more often.”

Dr. Dhvani Thakker, the hospital’s director of women’s medical oncology, said that knowing your genetics and family history can be lifesaving. “About 5 to 10 percent is genetics,” she said, “but then remember the other 90 percent is lifestyle changes.”