‘It’s like you’re losing control of your life’
Lorraine Waring has been treated for breast cancer three times
Being a scientist didn’t help Lorraine Waring cope any better with breast cancer.
Not the first time, not the second, or even the third.
“Being a patient is hard,” said the British- born, recently retired biochemist at Pfizer Inc., about her three bouts with breast cancer. The first was in her left breast in 2012, then in her right breast in 2015, and most recently, on her right side, last year.
“I’m cancer-free at the moment,” Waring, 61, said recently, as she shared her breast cancer story.
She was a scientist working for
Pfizer in England when the pharmaceutical giant relocated its global headquarters to New London and she transferred there in 2001.
Waring has returned home for visits over the years, but she became a U. S. citizen in 2014 and makes her home in Mystic.
At the end of this past May, just as she finished her final treatment for her third occurrence of breast cancer, Waring retired after 38 years with Pfizer. Her last assignment was working on clinical trials for prostate cancer, but she said even given all her scientific knowledge and expertise, her own diagnoses were difficult.
“When you’re a patient, it’s like you’re losing control of your life in a way, and it takes a toll on you mentally,” she said.
Her first breast cancer was detected in 2012, when a routine mammogram turned up something suspicious. Her obstetrician-gynecologist sent her to an oncologist affiliated with the Backus Hospital in Norwich and she was diagnosed with DCIS, or ductal carcinoma in situ, which is abnormal cells in the lining of the milk ducts and one of the most commonly diagnosed breast cancers.
Waring was 52 and had no suspicions before the mammogram. She had a lumpectomy and said the surgery wasn’t difficult — it was so easy, in fact, she went back to work the next day.
“But what wasn’t easy was the mental part,” she said. “You’re losing a part of your body; your body is violated, and you lose part of your womanhood.”
All of her treatment was at Backus and, following the lumpectomy, she underwent six weeks of radiation but no chemotherapy.
Later, there was a regimen of alternating mammograms and ultrasounds followed six months later by an MRI as a proactive approach to monitoring for any return of cancer.
And it did come back. In 2015 an MRI detected DCIS again, this time on both sides of her right breast. She had to decide whether she wanted two lumps taken out, or a mastectomy to remove the entire breast. She decided on the mastectomy.
“Think of it like a pie,” she said, “and if you take two pieces from opposite sides, you don’t have much left.”
The surgery wasn’t as difficult or painful as the actual decision to remove her breast, she said, and she was fortunate that no radiation or chemotherapy was necessary after.
It was the summer of 2015 and once again, Waring was cancer-free. She believes the relative ease of the treatment for her first two bouts with breast cancer was a result of her lifestyle — she’s a fitness buff.
But cancer wasn’t done with her, and in the spring of 2019, on a trip to England to visit family for the Easter holiday, Waring discovered a lump on her right side, just below where her breast was reconstructed after the mastectomy.
“I could not believe it, I just could not believe it,” she said.
She admits it took a bit of courage when she was back in Connecticut to call the doctor to schedule an appointment because she didn’t want to hear more bad news.
But that’s just what she got. A biopsy confirmed it was Stage 2 breast cancer since it was no longer contained, and this time the treatment would be chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Scientist Waring was impressed.
“The new immunotherapies are amazing,” she said. “They attack the cancer itself and they have turned around some cancers.”
“I worked in oncology clinical trials, not breast cancer, but prostate cancer, so the terminology was highly familiar to me and I was able to get support from my colleagues,” she said.
Fully embracing every day
The third bout would be the hardest. A full day every three weeks for six sessions — two bags of chemo followed by two bags of immunotherapies — administered intravenously. Each session lasted six or seven hours and afterwards, in the ensuing weeks, Waring would fall ill.
“It was horrible, I couldn’t eat, and the inside of my mouth felt like the sandpaper you put in the bottom of a bird cage,” she said.
By the time it was finished, Waring had dropped 20 pounds and lost her hair. The chemotherapy wrapped up sooner, but the immunotherapy took longer and, when it finally finished this past May, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Waring retired from Pfizer.
“I really wanted to taste life again without breast cancer,” she said, adding she wanted to fully embrace every day.
Her advice to other women is to never miss a mammogram or pap smear, and to take every opportunity for preventive care.
“Our health should be our priority,” she said, adding she’s happy to be able to go cycling and downhill skiing again.
“Going through this ordeal I realized the importance of keeping fit,” she said. “I think I went through it a lot easier because I was fit and healthy.”
After surviving breast cancer three times, Lorraine Waring’s advice to other women is to never miss a mammogram or pap smear, and to take every opportunity for preventive care.