[00:00:00] Adam Walker: From Susan G. Komen, this is Real Pink, a podcast exploring real stories, struggles, and triumphs related to breast cancer. We’re taking the conversation from the doctor’s office to your living room.
This is Real Talk, a podcast conversation where we’re digging deep into breast cancer and the realities patients and survivors face every day. We’re talking openly and honestly about just how difficult breast cancer can be, from being diagnosed, to selecting the right treatment plan, to living day to day with metastatic breast cancer, and life after treatment ends.
In today’s episode, we’re talking about mastectomies and how they aren’t boob jobs. Asha Miller was diagnosed with stage 3 HER2 negative breast cancer at age 33. She was in great physical shape and never suspected the lumps she found in her armpit. She underwent chemotherapy, And surgery for a double mastectomy, followed by radiation that left severe burns on her skin.
She thought she was finally finished with her treatment, but a recall on her breast implants sent her back to the hospital for another surgery. Dr. Stephanie McCoy is a passionate advocate for health equity and qualitative research professional at Susan G Komen. With her extensive experience in public health, Stephanie works to ensure the work Komen does across various mission programs is responsive to communities. We serve towards breast health equity for all ladies. Thank you for being here. And Stephanie, I’m going to turn the conversation over to you.
[00:01:25] Dr Stephanie McCoy: Yeah, thanks for having us. Good morning, Asha. So glad to have you here. Thanks for being willing to share your story and just really talk about how mastectomies aren’t boob jobs.
Because they aren’t, I do want to first, start by grounding us what mastectomies are. A mastectomy is a surgery to remove 1 unilateral or 2 bilateral breasts with the breast tissue. And in most cases, the nipple area are also removed. It’s a really common procedure, 2013, 2015, we’re having them less.
What we see is that even with the pandemic, the rights have pretty stable, as if people are having them pretty often, it’s estimated that about 100,000 women in the US have them every year. So it’s a really common procedure to help either reduce the risk of breast cancer or treat it. And while they’re effective in some of those functions, these procedures have very real, physical, emotional, social challenges.
And we are very fortunate to hear some of those. I’ll just let you talk, tell us about how you were diagnosed and what your experience was and we’ll kick it off with you.
[00:02:34] Asha Miller: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Stephanie. Thank you for having me here. Such an honor, to have this platform. I always say it is always an honor to have a seat at the table and to be able to share your stories because patient stories It’s important, for creating health equity to create programs and different ways of pushing these narratives away and bringing more truth to the story.
So thank you for having me here. I always start my story the year before I was diagnosed because it brings a lot of perspective. So the year I was diagnosed, I went in for what was supposed to be a routine surgery to remove a cyst on my uterus. And they were going to do it laparoscopically. They were going to go in, it was going to be very quick, but I woke up and I had one less ovary. And when that happened, it wasn’t explained to me that when you remove an ovary, a lot of times your hormonal levels go really, low, haywire and that affects your mental health. So my mental health was affected severely and I became very depressed and anxiety, it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. And this is coming from someone who was later diagnosed with cancer, but mental health, it’s just something that we don’t talk about, especially, I think, as a black woman, immigrant woman within our cultures, it’s pray or prayed away or just no medication.
So I sought the help of medical professionals, mental health professionals. And then I started going to the gym as well to start moving my body in a space that no one knew. And as that happened, I became a fitness instructor because I became so obsessed with moving my body after a while that the people in the gym were like, we want you to be an instructor here.
And I thought this is crazy. So I became a fitness instructor and about two months later, I have two beautiful babies. They’re not really babies anymore, but my son is 15 and my daughter is 10 and I call them my two reasons. They’re the reason I do any of this. There’s a reason, they’re the reason I’m here today.
A lot of a huge part of it. And, so I speak about them in every setting I can. And yeah, my daughter at the time was three years old and my son was eight and I found the bump in the shower and I call it a bump and not a lump because it was about say a half a centimeter big that I felt. It was so tiny.
No one could really feel it. I felt it. I was shaving in the shower and my thumb rubbed against something. And I just thought, man, I’m working out a lot. I had lost about 30 pounds. I gained a ton of muscle. I was like, okay, I must be popping a lymph node in and out. Sometimes I would feel it and other times I didn’t.
And that’s why I’m a big advocate for whenever we’re doing our self breast exams to make sure that we’re rotating our arms forward and back as we are feeling our, underneath our armpits. And that was something I didn’t know and I didn’t do so I kept thinking it was gone and then it was there and it was gone and then it was there.
So a couple months later, I always say I rushed into my daughter’s preschool appointments and I asked our doctor, I’m like, okay, can you feel this tiny bump or am I, just making it up? And she said, I don’t, I can barely feel it. I feel a little tiny bump, but because you felt something, I can send you for an ultrasound.
So I thought, brilliant, wonderful. I went for the ultrasound. It came back, but the hospital called and said, everything looks great. And in six months, if nothing changes, you can come back. And I thought, okay. Then the doctor’s office called and the nurse said, We can’t be 100 percent of course, but we don’t see anything concerning, you can wait six months and if anything changes, you can come back, but it was the one thing the nurse said that changed everything for me when she said, we can’t be 100 percent as of what happened the year before.
I thought no. I’m living my life. Everything is at 100%. So I opted for whatever the next step was to be 100%. And it was a biopsy. And I did not know at the time that a biopsy involved a needle. I think if I knew, I’m not going to lie, I may have hesitated a little bit. I’m glad that I didn’t know. But yeah, I went up for my biopsy, this brilliant surgical oncologist that had been practicing for 30 plus years.
He did my ultrasound guided biopsy. He showed me on the ultrasound, if it was a shadow, it would, more likely be something, concerning. And at the end I looked at him and I said, I know you probably can’t tell me, but what do you think it is? And he said, I honestly think it’s just a cyst.
And I thought, okay, this is great. I took a selfie. I took some pictures. I took pictures of the needles and I thought, this is a story I’ll tell my mom, different people. And that’s it. And two days later on September 28th, 2017, I got the call
at eight o’clock in the morning from that same surgeon telling me that I had breast cancer.
And I always say that at that moment, it felt like I left my body, like I was just floating above it. It was such an out of body experience. And I think that for a lot of us that have been diagnosed, it becomes like this disconnect mentally, physically, just put your head down, let’s go, what’s the next steps?
So I thought, I found it myself, it’s tiny, maybe do a lumpectomy,, we’ll probably do some radiation and then, let me just move on with my life and unfortunately that’s not the case. I had ended up with stage three C from three B breast cancer and it was already outside my, into my lymph nodes.
It had calcified against my chest wall and I was just devastated. I thought, wow, if I had waited that six months, would I still be here today? Yeah, after that diagnosis, we went really fast. Chemotherapy, my double mastectomy and the double mastectomy, especially since this is why we’re here today talking about it, it was hard. You wake up, I opted to have straight to expanders, which if anyone knows, if the expanders are rock hard, you’re hugging someone and it’s just bumping against them. You can’t feel there’s a lot of loss of sensation. It feels nothing like a breast at all. I woke up with drains coming out of me and also feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest and I could not breathe.
It was so heavy and tight right after that I went to radiation, which I think is a unspoken. I don’t know, taboo or something because in the movies they will talk about chemo inaccurately, but they still mention it, but no one talks about radiation. So I didn’t know what to expect, especially as a black woman.
What did my, what would my skin look like? My doctor sat across from me, and he was Caucasian and he talked about how red my skin was going to be. My skin never turned red, it turned black. So things like that, that we don’t think about until you’re the one sitting in the chair, wishing and hoping that someone sees you as an individual person rather than a patient.
And yeah, the radiation, I unfortunately had third degree burns. It was excruciating and waiting for those to heal so that I could finally have my exchange surgery and get my softer implants put in, and that came at the top of 2019. I was so happy. I got my exchange surgery. I was ready. I went under the muscle and at the time I thought that was my only option. But looking back, I realized that many surgeons, unfortunately, do not give you all the options. They only give you the options they know how to do. And so they limit our
choices that are already so limited, which is so sad and a whole other topic that we can talk about another day.
But I got my implants put in under the muscle and woke up, four months later as I was healing, I had another surgery, a uterine ablation surgery to stop bleeding that was started from chemotherapy. And four days after that surgery, I’m healing. I had six surgeries in two years and I’m like, finally, okay, this is the last surgery.
I’m healing up and I go on the breasties, the nonprofit that I’m a part of. And I go on their Instagram and I see that there were implants that were recalled. They’re causing another type of cancer. And it’s like the lottery, but the opposite where you don’t want the numbers to match. I’m holding my implant card and I’m looking online and I’m looking and I’m matching and then finally the last number and I’m thinking, no, this is the highest grade like implant that is the most toxic that’s inside of me. And I was just devastated. In that moment, it’s very important to talk about the mental health aspect of surgeries and it’s something I told my one oncologist, honestly, before I fired her was what you say and do, as a medical professional, if I talk to you, what I say and do does not affect your actual life, but what you say and do to me, it affects my actual life. Whether I live or die, whether I live with quality life or not, whether the quantity of life I can get or not. So, we have a lot of responsibility to advocate on the patient side, and there’s a lot of responsibility on the medical side as well.
[00:12:58] Dr Stephanie McCoy: I love it. You said you advocated for yourself and fire them. So many people who are living with cancer talk about this person is the quarterback of your team. You all are co quarterbacks, like you’re working together, but if that quarterback is not producing the numbers that you need. And, outcomes that you need and responding to your care, where you are, it’s okay to advocate for yourself and say, you know what? You’re not going from the house. So that’s weird. So what did you know about mastectomy before you decided backing up a little bit to your first life? I know that you’re having to now see that this is something that you’re going to have to maybe redo or fix, but talk to me about what you knew about this before and then bring us to when you were having to figure out what to do about this.
[00:13:41] Asha Miller: Yeah, going back to what I knew about mastectomy. That’s such a great question. Thank you. Because the truth is, we don’t know until we know. I realize that I have a lot of grace for people that ask questions and don’t know much about the breast cancer community or what’s happening because I, was them before I was diagnosed.
I thought I knew, but I didn’t. And when it came to mastectomy, I honestly went to what I saw on TV or what I saw from, or heard from friends and I just thought, okay, they take your breasts off and, they either fill it with implant and actually I only thought an implant and I thought that’s it.
You get an implant in and then you move on. I didn’t realize the loss of sensation at all. I didn’t realize so many breasties have lost their nipples. I didn’t realize that there were other options like aesthetic flap closure and viable options that like D flap or S flap or lat flaps. I didn’t know anything about those.
And so knowing your options is huge because when you don’t know, then your choices that already are so limited become even more limited and you can make some dangerous choices. Like I did without the knowledge, I thought I did my research. I picked the right doctor. I asked a ton of questions before my surgery, but I didn’t ask the right ones.
And that’s because I didn’t know the right ones to ask. I just thought this is, he’s the expert. He knows, he’s the quarterback. He knows I’m going to put everything into his hand, but realizing that the doctors, it’s a practice. They don’t always know what’s best for us. So that’s pretty much brand new.
[00:15:40] Dr Stephanie McCoy: What were your feelings about having and you identified, as a black woman, I know there are certain feelings about cancer and certain feelings about surgeries in general, and the type of care you would see in our community, so did you have any feelings about that? Did others have feelings about that? And what were they?
[00:16:01] Asha Miller: Yeah. Brilliant question. I feel like, I grew up in a West Indian family and we have a very limited conversation around family history and when it comes to surgeries and losses in that regard and so when it came to me deciding to either, essentially amputate my breasts.
That’s what we call it. Because that’s really what it is. It was a very personal decision, but of course there were opinions. Like you said, the opinions that were surrounding it were everything from, make like flat closure was not even on the table because whether it was the doctors or it was my family.
Or even some friends. It was, why would you even choose that? Will you feel like a woman? Why will you feel attractive? I was married at the time. What would your husband think? All of those things that we put onto, specifically women to uphold that look and that feeling.
And it’s, guess what? I was flat then for four years and I was very much a woman. And guess what? I was also very attractive and I was the only one that found myself attractive. And so it’s wild, we have these thoughts, but something that really changed my perspective on that was looking at my daughter.
I looked at her at seven years old at the time and I said, if I stand in the mirror and I look at my flat, deflated chest. When they took the implants out, it was deflated. It wasn’t aesthetic black closure. It wasn’t anything that was beautiful in the societal view of beauty. It was honestly, this is ugly, this is not beautiful, but what am I going to do? How do I find beauty in this? And that was a huge moment for me. I was asked three weeks after my explained surgery to walk in New York fashion week. And I walked in front of thousands of people with a bra and underwear and fishnet stockings and knee high boots with other breast cancer thrivers and survivors.
And I walked down there so powerfully, I couldn’t even raise my hands because I was just fresh out of surgery. And I looked around at my fellow, Breasties and then just people finding beauty in me. And I thought they can find beauty in this. Why can’t I, and if I can find beauty in what I look like now, think about what that’s going to do for my daughter.
Who’s standing there with a flat chest saying, does this make me less of a woman? And that just challenged me to start intentionally loving my body. I would do these things called, and I started doing it called mirror moments where I would stand in front of the mirror and I would touch each scar of each surgery.
It was 27 scars. I’m currently at 13 surgeries. And I would just speak love, love, love over them. And at first I would say out loud things I found beautiful. And it was like my earlobe and my elbow. I was like, yeah, nice cheek, But finally, after about a year or so I can start saying, the folds in my chest, and wow, that’s beautiful.
Oh, wow. That’s the concaveness of my chest on the right side because they had to take part of my chest wall because of the cancer there. Wow. I find beauty in that. I looked across the desert. I went to Dubai and I saw the beauty in the dips and the caverns, the ripples along the sand and I thought that kind of looks like my chest and I can’t I find beauty like that here.
And it really was a coming home to myself. After I had left my body after my diagnosis, it was like a coming home and I shared it with my daughter. I shared it with my son. I wanted them to be in on this process because I wanted them to
know that it’s not perfect here, but every day we’re thriving and striving to love ourselves just a little bit more every day.
And it’s something that I really just wanted to learn. Especially through this mastectomy because calling it a boob job is so demeaning just because the mental aspect of it, the trauma of it, the excruciating pain of it, the loss of sensation of your breast, feeling and touching your own body and not being able to, even it feels like you’re doing an exam when you’re doing a self breast exam on someone else.
It’s trying to relearn that new body. That’s something that people that have the essential boob jobs don’t have to do. And it’s, just undermining a lot of what we’ve gone through.
[00:21:11] Dr Stephanie McCoy: So what else have you heard people, whether it’s comparing it to boob job or comparing it to other experiences that have demean or undermine really what the experience was that you’ve had with insecting?
[00:21:24] Asha Miller: Yeah, I think another thing. So I’m eight weeks out of my deep lab surgery. It was brutal. And one of my she said, Hey, I mentioned this to my mom and she said, so is it more like a vanity thing? Like she just wants to look good. And she was horrified that her mom said that, but I looked at her and I said, I’m not because, I get it. I get it. It’s yes, it’s horrible. It’s sad and it’s untrue. But yet I also get it. And so many people, they look at breasts and they, on the outside, they look at breasts and they think, Oh, it’s just a vanity thing, it’s not essential. But think about a part of your body that is being amputated, whatever part that is.
And on top of that, so many of us have stories and we have such a connection to our breasts. It’s the thing that fed my children. It’s the thing that nourished them and gave them life and roles and joy and comfort and it’s, also a part of us being, sexual beings, our breasts.
And so to demean that and to say that it’s not important to want to have breasts to be touched. You want to have even our nipples. So many of us have lost our nipples. Thankfully, I was offered a nipple sparing surgery and I got to keep my nipples all throughout when I was flat and now I’m healing from my deep. But many of my breastfeeds, we don’t have nipples. And there is something psychological of also that happens when you look at your body and you’re missing a part of you. And now that I have them, I reach across and there’s
something there. And while I’m so grateful, I’m so in love with my new foobs, there is grief there as well with another surgery with the deep flap.
I love what my outcome has been. My surgeon was phenomenal. And also I was at the camp and I’m looking at my flatty sisters. There was a ton of flatties there and they went to do a group photo. Right here in my office. I’m looking right now at the photo from last year. I’m in it and it’s beautiful and I sat there with tears streaming down my face because while I love what I have, I also I’m grieving the community that I had before.
This is something someone with a boob job doesn’t have to think about, the ebbs and flows, the exchanges we have to do year after year, the flips in the implant, the radiation and the capsular contractor, which is where your breast gets really hard from scar tissue after radiation because our skin is tight from the burns.
Those are things that people with boob jobs don’t have to deal with. And so to hear people think that it’s vanity or to hear people think that it’s, something that’s just cosmetic, what happened with the wall street journal article that specifically the headline said, I used to judge women who had boob jobs until I got one.
And what was so demeaning about that was we fight so hard to get covered by insurance. Insurance sometimes want to, they don’t want to, they want to make us pay more for our mastectomies and for our deep laps surgeries because they think that it should be ruled under cosmetic. And we have had people fight and fight to change those laws.
So when we have a big organization, or article like that come out from a very prominent place that people read, specifically businessmen and those who may have voices when it comes to changing laws and policies when we have that happen, it sets us back because now I’m thinking I had to fight to get my deep lap covered as much as possible, but I still have thousands of dollars in medical debt. And so does so many of my breasties, especially those of us that are, were diagnosed at earlier ages. We should be saving for colleges for our kids and cars and having 401ks and all these amazing things and instead we are saddled with thousands and thousands of dollars of medical debt.
That’s something someone with a boob job doesn’t have to worry about. I have to finish paying for chemo and radiation and my first mastectomy, first stage mastectomy and my exchange surgery and my explant surgery. And now my deep flap surgery, as well as my uterine ablation surgery and my hysterectomy.
That’s so much to put on someone in their twenties and their thirties and forties. And then to turn around and demean it and say, isn’t that just for vanity? Isn’t that just, so that you can look good. No, it’s a part of our bodies, and if you can get a part of your body back, I promise you, you’d probably try to get it back if you could, especially if you chose to do so.
[00:26:49] Dr Stephanie McCoy: Yeah, and I don’t think you’ve got an opportunity to talk more about how you were feeling with the recall, because I think, and I don’t want to tell you a story for you, but I feel like even with comparing someone who’s had a boot job, you having to go back and deal with this recall, that’s one other surgery, right? That I don’t feel like it’s just not the same experience. Did you want to share any more about that experience after the recall?
[00:27:12] Asha Miller: That was one of, for me, that was a single hardest moment in my cancer diagnosis. And that’s saying something because I had two different types of chemo. And then I had another set of chemo.
I was diagnosed with two different types of cancer, radiation, as I said, third degree burns. And that was the most difficult. I think for me why it was I lost even more trust in the medical system. It was, I asked and I researched and I asked again, is this the best implant? I didn’t go in there just willy nilly.
I really went in there very knowledgeable, trying to figure out as much as I could and to know that you put this in and at the time knew that it was already causing cancer in other women, specifically other breast cancer survivors, because we have them. No breast tissue. And this type of cancer was caused by inflammation.
That was because the implant had so much, a lot of texture on the outside of it. And so when it would rub against our skin that didn’t have a lot of fat or breast tissue, it would create this inflammation. And so to prey on a community that was already going through such heartache and pain. It was just devastating.
It was also devastating to me because I didn’t have to really deal with the loss of my breasts, to be honest, until then I woke up and yes, I had horrific pain, did not feel like my real breath, but I looked down and it looked like, looked like boobs, mechanical boobs. And then after I, when I had my implants put in again, I woke up and I had for us again, but this surgery was going to be different. I would wake up. I didn’t know what I would see. And so I didn’t look at my chest for a couple of weeks. I went into my surgeon’s office and she looked and she said, Oh, it looks so much better than I thought. You don’t know, please, you can take a look.
And I said, I can’t, I’m not ready. And so I finally did in my bathroom all by myself. I unwrapped all of the bandages. And I looked at my chest for the first time and it wasn’t beautiful. I think sometimes we want to make it pretty and we want to make a pretty little pink ribbon around all of our stories, but that’s not the reality.
The reality is sometimes it is not pretty. Sometimes we look at ourselves and there is no beauty to be found. And yet, I truly believe sitting with ourselves and really pouring that love that we so freely in this community give to others, the grace that we so freely give to others. The breasties in my community are the most caring and loving individuals, but sometimes we forget to put that care and love onto ourselves.
And I think when we start to do that, then we really start to feel that beauty and see that beauty that’s in us that maybe it’s not societal beauty, but it’s still beautiful. And I found beauty in my flat chest so much that before I did my deep, I looked at my surgeon and I said, if you can’t make me look and feel as beautiful as I feel right now. I don’t want breasts. I don’t want it.
[00:30:39] Dr Stephanie McCoy: I love it. So what can we, when I say we, you’ve talked a lot about self advocacy, but then also advocacy organizations do to help you and help us also change the narrative of how we’re talking about mastectomy, how we’re definitely not comparing them to boob jobs, how we’re educating the public about how to have conversations about this topic.
[00:31:00] Asha Miller: One of the ways that organizations, especially those, like Komen or that have a really big presence is something that happened with me eight years before I was diagnosed actually was part of a race and I was, had to be among, I think it was like thousands. It was so many people of different survivors and thrivers.
And I walked the 60 miles in three days and slept in the pink tents and raised the money and it was such an amazing experience. One thing that I thought of though years later when I was diagnosed was I wasn’t, I didn’t really know, I didn’t really get the time to hear the stories of these amazing men and women that I was walking with. And I think something that we can do is, Some of the narratives like, save the tatas, I think that those types of things also undermine some of the, just the realities, the brutality that we go through. Forget about the tatas, save the women, like we save us and worry about the tatas later.
Yes, we want breasts. So many, some of us want breasts, but that’s the last thing we’re thinking of. And that moment, we’re just like, we want to live. I want to live. So I think that some of those slogans, some of the emphasis on the pink and the pomp and the fun, I think sometimes our voices, our pain gets drowned out by those scenarios, by those campaigns.
So I think having real breast cancer survivors, thrivers, I call myself a breast cancer veteran because I feel like it gives homage to that the fight isn’t over. A lot of people like to tilt their head and go, you’re good now, right? You’re good now. And none of us are good now. I’m going to just pop the little proverbial bubble and say, we all have something we’re struggling with. Many of us are diagnosed with PTSD, myself included, after breast cancer, and we don’t want necessarily all of the fluff, and that’s wonderful, the parties sometimes, but we want to also hear the stories, and especially for those outside the community to bring the reality. I didn’t realize that people were dying as much as they are from breast cancer when I was a part of those types of events. And so I think really emphasizing those because I think it’s easy sometimes to tie a pink ribbon around it and want to make people feel good.
So they give, but I’m like, we also need to bring the reality, our stories to the forefront and make sure that those stories are being told. Just like me being able to be here and pull up a seat at the table and share my story, the good, the bad, the ugly. I think this is where real change happens, and where people can be heard.
Organizations can really start making that change by hearing the stories, sharing those stories, especially, in bigger events so that those especially not diagnosed can really get the reality of what’s happening, to us. As I’m sure you know that black women are diagnosed at the same rate as white women, but we’re dying 40, I think now it’s 42% more.
When I was diagnosed it was 40%, and as my advocacy grew and I started learning more, the numbers are still growing. I need to look at my daughter and look at my son and, forgive me as I get emotional, but that is who I fight for every day. And so I want more than her tatas to be saved. I want her to be saved and I want more than just fun events that are filled with pinkness.
I want her to hear the stories of struggle, but also hope. I want her to hear the struggle because to know that she’s not alone and just inspiring ones so that she thinks, Oh, so everybody else is thriving, but me. So I think that is something that I would love to see more organizations, sharing the real stories on platforms
like that of real men and women that have gone through, because also the reality is that breast cancer happens to men as well.
And so those types of, like bras everywhere and pinkness and those slogans also undermine them in the community as well.
[00:35:37] Dr Stephanie McCoy: Yeah, Asha, your babies have a fierce moment where advocate in your community has a fierce moment where advocate and we are so very fortunate to have heard your story.
Thank you for your transparency today. Thank you for sharing that and that’s what Komen is trying to do, to elevate these experiences. We really appreciate you.
[00:35:59] Asha Miller: Thank you for having me here. I truly appreciate it.
[00:36:02] Adam Walker: Yeah, I second that. I really appreciate you just sharing your story and being so real and honest and vulnerable with us.
I’m curious, as we’re wrapping up; do you have any final things you want your listeners to take away from this conversation?
[00:36:17] Asha Miller: I think the biggest thing that I would want listeners to take away from this conversation is to advocate for yourself, to speak up always for yourself, whether that is in your doctor’s office, whether that’s with family, whether that’s with friends, to always speak up for yourself; and the other part too, is that for anyone listening, whether they are organizations or outside the community may not be aware of what’s happening with the breast cancer community, just to know that mastectomies are 1000 percent not a boob job, that the things that we go through are so much heavier and deeper, and that walking alongside us and asking questions is the best way to learn and to be supportive of those in the community.
[00:37:09] Adam Walker: That’s right. Well said. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate your conversation and how you’re contributing to this community.
[00:37:17] Asha Miller: Thank you, Adam. Appreciate you and Dr. Stephanie so much. You have such a warm spirit. Oh my goodness. It was such a great conversation.
[00:37:26] Dr Stephanie McCoy: Are you talking about me? I was talking about you.
[00:37:29] Asha Miller: Oh my, thank you!
[00:37:30] Adam Walker: Thanks for listening to Real Pink, a weekly podcast by Susan G. Komen. For more episodes, visit realpink.komen.org. For more on breast cancer, visit komen.org. Make sure to check out @SusanGkomen on social media. I’m your host, Adam. You can find me on Twitter @AJWalker or on my blog, adamjwalker.com.