Surviving Breast Cancer, Embracing Life

The following is an Editorial Resource from YourTotalHealth.

"I'm Lucky to Be Here"

Iris Berman, 81
Years since diagnosis: 29

In 1979, Iris Berman went from one doctor to another in New York, trying to find out what was causing the unusual discharge from her right nipple. No one could figure it out. Finally, a breast surgeon performed nipple surgery, which took care of the discharge problem but within six weeks, the nipple began to invert. “I just knew it was malignant,” says Berman, now 81 and a mother of three grown children and two grandchildren. And it was—she had a radical mastectomy, then spent three weeks recovering in the hospital. “I didn’t have chemotherapy or any follow-up treatments but every year I did have to go for nuclear, bone, and liver tests to see if the cancer had spread,” she recalls. “Everything worked out fine. For me, the hardest thing was vanity—how was I going to look?—because I had modeled at one time so I was vain. I would cry every time I went to a lingerie store, but in regular clothes I still looked good.” 

Another mastectomy
Several months after the mastectomy, Berman found a lump in her other breast that turned out to be a calcification. “Because of my history, the doctors wanted to take the breast off,” she recalls, “so I had another mastectomy in 1980. I had lived in fear that it was going to happen so I was relieved to have it off because my sister-in-law’s calcification had turned to cancer.” Because breast reconstruction was so new at that time, it wasn’t an option, so Berman accepted the loss of her second breast and went on with her life. “Losing one or both breasts is a loss but it is not an arm, a leg, or an eye,” she says. “My choice was not to feel sorry for myself but to say I’m okay and look forward to today and tomorrow because you don’t know what’s going to happen much beyond that.” 

After her first mastectomy, Berman began participating in an aerobic exercise program at the hospital—and got hooked. “The theory was that it might help with mental attitude and it absolutely did help me clear my mind and feel strong,” she recalls. “I’ve been exercising ever since.” 

Dating after breast cancer
After her husband of 44 years died in 1992 and she later began dating, she always found a way to mention that she’d had breast cancer. “I wanted to let them know who I was and what I’d been through,” she explains. She has been with her beau, whom she met through a neighbor nearly 40 years ago, for 10 years, and they’ve lived together in San Francisco for the last five. 

"I think the experience [of having breast cancer] is always with you but it’s not the end of the world,” she says. “It’s just a change in your life, the beginning of a new episode. After that experience, my attitude changed: I stopped sweating the small stuff; I’ve learned to appreciate what’s around me, what I have. My feeling is, I’m lucky to be here; I never thought I’d get this far.”

By: Stacey Colino

What's Next: The Second Time Around

• A Funny Kind of Strength
• 10 Years Later
• An "Awful" Family History