But you could certainly call her a fighter. Once diagnosed, the former competitive ski racer attacked her disease like she might have tackled a ski course: with all the effort she could muster. In addition to undergoing chemotherapy, radiation and a mastectomy, she signed up for two research studies. She’s also become an advocate for UCSF Medical Center and its proposed new Mission Bay hospital, part of which will be devoted to cutting-edge cancer treatment, as well as a support and resource for other breast cancer patients.
UCSF is at the forefront of medicine, certainly in northern California for breast cancer, it was an obvious choice.
Four years ago, she wouldn’t have imagined such a life. Athletic and health conscious, the nurse practitioner ‘did all the right things,’ exercising and eating well. Just 40 years old when diagnosed, with three small children ranging from 9 months to 4 years old, Galloway was stunned to learn she had cancer. “I felt like my body had betrayed me,” she remembers.
The only warning sign — a lump in her right breast — was initially diagnosed at another hospital as a blocked milk duct. Nine months later, after reexamining her case, the doctor called her back in. “They asked me if I could come in that afternoon, and I said no. Then they asked me if I could come in the next morning, and I said no,” she says. “And by the time they asked me if I could come in tomorrow afternoon, I was like, Oh my god, something is very wrong. And when I went in, I could read the concern on their faces.” After performing an ultrasound and mammogram, they told Galloway that she had a very suspicious mass in her breast.
At that point, with her medical charts in hand, Galloway called the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center and asked for an appointment that afternoon. “UCSF is at the forefront of medicine, certainly in northern California for breast cancer,” she says. “It was an obvious choice.” She went in for a biopsy, and a few days later, met with Dr. Laura Esserman, a breast surgeon and the director of the center.
While time passes and her chances improve, Galloway definitely doesn’t refer to breast cancer as a closed chapter in her life. “When I was going through treatment, there was not a second of any day that I didn’t think about breast cancer,” she says. “Now, I wake up in the morning and it’s not the first thing that I think of. But it’s very much part of who I am.” Who she is looks a lot like the old her, she says, only in sharper focus. “Cancer makes you realize who your friends are, what your priorities are,” she says. “You lose fears about things that are completely irrelevant.”
She is also now a point person for other women who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, and often shares some of the first advice she got from Esserman: “This is not an emergency. You do not need to make the decision today. You have to slow down, take a deep breath and start collecting information.” Because the amount of information can be overwhelming, Galloway recommends that cancer patients never go to a medical appointment alone. “Find one person who is competent, thoughtful and organized to help you pull all the information together,” she says. “It could be a friend, a relative or someone from UCSF’s support program.”
One reason Galloway welcomes the chance to talk about her experience and counsel other patients is the chance to be up-front about a topic that can otherwise get swept under the rug. “Our culture is so obsessed with health and perfection that people seem to think that if you’ve had a disease, you’ve somehow failed,” she says. “That is so ridiculous. It’s bad luck, but it’s not a failure. You don’t do something unethical to get cancer. And if you’re open and honest about it, it feels a lot better.”
It’s that honesty that makes her resist the term survivor, and any implication that out of sheer strength and persistence, she won a battle that others have lost. “I’m very proud of how hard I fought, but a lot of my outcome was because of luck and good treatment,” she says. “I feel so lucky and grateful.”
