By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist
“I don’t get worked up over things,” says Ilyse Wagner about having had breast cancer. “The whole experience…really changed who I am and how I look at things.”
She adds, “it’s not because I looked death in the eye,” as she was fortunate to have early diagnosis and treatment. “It just put things in perspective.”
Since the moment of her diagnosis, Wagner became an active proponent of breast cancer education. She doesn’t like the phrase “breast cancer prevention” because there is no absolute way to prevent cancer.
“I’m a real advocate of taking charge of your own health,” said Wagner, who had a unilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery in 2011 and 2012.
Wagner is a “survivor facilitator” for Check Your Boobies, an organization founded by Seattle-area resident Heike Malakoff (“All about education,” Oct. 5, 2007, jewishsound.org/all-about-education). Facilitators instruct women in breast self-exams at special parties and meetings. Regular breast checks are one of the most important components of early cancer detection. In 2007, Malakoff told JTNews that many of us are “so supportive of ‘pink’ and the breast cancer walk, but when it came to checking our breasts, we didn’t know anything.”
Even before she was treated, Wagner decided to be very upfront about her cancer, finding it “empowering” to talk about it. She even let friends and co-workers feel her lump, so they would know what one feels like.
“It helps me, it helps those around me, and I think it has the potential to help others,” she said.
Wagner, who works full-time for Microsoft, is also active with the Young Survival Coalition, an international organization focusing on women ages 40 and under diagnosed with breast cancer. Originally reaching out to them for support, she has stayed involved as a mentor for women newly diagnosed. Pointing out that most research is focused on post-menopausal woman, she thinks that newer studies will have more statistics about younger women. “There are more and more young women being diagnosed,” she said.
Wagner grew up on Mercer Island and went to Boston University. After living in Los Angeles she returned to the Northwest.
“I was a high school math teacher for eight years, then got into tech industry through consulting, then health care IT, then Microsoft,” Wagner said.
She attended Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation growing up, and that’s where she still belongs, serving on the board and many committees. The Jewish community and her employer were tremendously supportive while she was being treated, she says.
The mother of three is married to Greg Wagner and is an active runner with a few marathons and half-marathons under her belt. She often runs with a women’s team that call itself “Tits’n’tats,” a reference to the tattooed nipple Wagner has on her reconstructed breast.
“Going through chemo takes a toll on you physically and mentally,” she said, but she feels her mastectomy went well partly because she was in very good shape. She resumed running to get in shape before her reconstruction. She ran the Mercer Island half marathon with a note on her back that read, “365 days ago I was diagnosed with cancer — today I’m kicking cancer’s butt,” she said.
As far as cancer education goes, “No one knows your body like you do,” she said. “It’s important to call out anything [different] you notice.”