Julie Is Feeling Great Six Years After Breast Cancer Diagnosis
In June 2019, Julie Tolek Prest found a lump in her breast. At the time, she was just 37 years old. She immediately called her primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center (BMC), who sent her for a mammogram. After an ultrasound and biopsy, Julie was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.
An Aggressive Cancer
Julie learned that her breast cancer was triple-positive, meaning that the cancer's growth is fueled by the hormones estrogen and progesterone and the HER2 protein. "It was a pretty aggressive cancer, and I needed a bunch of scans and tests to see if it had spread," Julie remembers.
After the testing, she met with surgical oncologist Dr. Michael Cassidy at the BMC Cancer Center to talk about treatment options. "They have an amazing team," she says. "I'm an attorney, so I took lots of notes and had lots of questions. They explained there were targeted treatments for triple positive cancer, and suggested I start with chemotherapy and then have surgery. After that, we would talk about radiation therapy. They got me into treatment within a couple weeks after my diagnosis. I felt really taken care of."
A Double Mastectomy and a Proposal
After six rounds of chemotherapy, Julie opted for a double mastectomy. "I've had saline implants since my 20s, and it was devastating to think about losing that part of my identity," says Julie. "I had already lost my hair because of the chemo, and I thought it would be better to reconstruct both breasts so they would match."
Two days before surgery, Julie's boyfriend proposed. "We had picked out the ring, so I knew it was coming, but he wanted to do it before surgery," says Julie. "My mom had flown into Boston for my surgery and knew he was going to propose that night, so she was there taking pictures and video. It was a really special time for us to be together."
After surgery, Julie was thrilled to learn her cancer had not spread beyond her breast and the three lymph nodes that were removed. She was also pleased with the expanders her plastic surgeon had placed as a first step in reconstruction. "Even at their lowest fill, the expanders gave me a little bit of cleavage, which I hadn't expected."
Radiation, and then Reconstructive Surgery
After much thought, Julie decided to have radiation therapy. "I had done everything else, so I wasn't going to not do this last thing and then wonder if I had made a mistake." She completed her final radiation treatment in March 2020 and began the process of reconstruction surgery in August of that year.
"I needed to have several surgeries to achieve what I was looking for," she says. "My reconstructive team was great, and Dr. Daniel Roh really knocked it out of the park to help me achieve the results I wanted," she says. "I was very particular, but I had been through a lot, and I felt like I deserved to be happy about the way I looked."
‘Back to Herself’
Now, six years out from her diagnosis, Julie feels like herself again. She's married, has her dream job, and is cancer-free. "I love my BMC team. All the doctors on the team are so compassionate, and all the nurses in the chemo department are just so outstanding and considerate. I feel like I got the attention and the care that I needed."