Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Breast cancer survivor highlights screening and early detection

Sheila Van Valkenburg didn’t think much about the routine mammogram she had done just after she turned 50 years old in 2018. “I had been in for my regular mammogram and then followed up with Dr. Emily McCarty at Valley View Women’s Health. When she received the results, she told me there was a small spot on the images and I needed some additional views. I thought, ‘This is no big deal, people do this all the time.’ “

The second set of images and ultrasound, were read by Valley View Radiologist Dr. William Weathers and he confirmed the spot on the ultrasound and ordered a biopsy to be performed. The biopsy came back positive for breast cancer.

“It floored me,” says Sheila, a nurse at Valley View Women’s Health and resident of the Eagle Valley for 26 years. “I didn’t have any family history, so no reason at all to suspect I would have breast cancer.”

Her first thought turned to how she would tell her 11-year-old son. “When you first hear you have breast cancer, you think, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to die,” so I told him, “I have something I want to talk to you about.’ And he asked me, ‘Do you have cancer?” I told him, ‘As a matter of fact, I do.” And he asked, “Are you going to die?” That astonished me. But we took it all in stride.”

Sheila’s breast cancer was caught early. It was considered stage one, measured less than one centimeter and it had not metastasized to other areas of her body. She immediately scheduled a lumpectomy with Dr. Brad Nichol at Roaring Fork Surgical, which is now a part of the Valley View network of care. She was treated with radiation for eight weeks, followed up with mammograms every six months and remained on Tamoxifen, a medication used to treat breast cancer and prophylactic agent against the development of breast cancer, for five years following diagnosis, living by the advice given to her by her best friend: “deal with what you know,” because, she says, “the what ifs will make you crazy.”

When asked, Sheila shares her story of early detection with her patients at Women’s Health, giving special encouragement to begin mammograms at age 40.

“The key to any cancer is early detection,” says Sheila. “Some people say, ‘I don’t want to know,’ but you do want to know. It could save your life.”