Las Vegas breast cancer victim knows fear, but doesn’t let it paralyze her

Shiela Burns looked like she didn’t have a care in the world.

She greeted me at the door of her northwest Las Vegas home with an infectious smile and talk about a beautiful day.

Pretty soon we’re laughing about how she and husband Tim — he owns a construction company — decided on the spur of the moment recently to fly to San Francisco to watch a baseball playoff game between the Giants and the Chicago Cubs.

We’re just two people having a good time shootin’ the breeze on a Chamber of Commerce day — who wouldn’t feel good when it’s 85 degrees with high sunlit clouds drifting across a clear blue sky?

And then I had to get around to why we were getting together.

The last time I saw the mother of two grown children was in August 2013. She was wheeled into a Sunrise Medical Center operating room to have a double mastectomy. Though she had a cancerous tumor removed from her breast six months earlier, every test since that time had showed she didn’t have cancer in either breast.

The surgery on that day was done at her request, to help quell her fear she’d die of breast cancer like her twin sister did in 2011. Research showed such surgery reduces the risk of breast cancer by more than 95 percent.

I visited Burns, 49, on Wednesday, hoping to hear she has more peace of mind.

She kinda does.

“I still have that fear but it’s back here,” she said, solemn as she pointed at the back of her head. “Every six months when they take blood, I get nervous. Once I asked if I could have cancer growing in me even though it didn’t show up in my blood. They said yes. … That worries me.”

Since Breast Cancer Awareness Month began 31 years ago, Burns and others who’ve fought the disease continue to share their stories. They hope by keeping a spotlight on a cancer that still kills 40,000 Americans each year, the search for a cure will be pursued with a greater sense of urgency.

What Burns too often sees in her mind’s eye is blood, at first seeping, then spurting from tumors on the chest and back of her sister. Her breast cancer had metastasized.

Breast cancer has left two wounded and two dead in her family. She was 5 years old when her dad’s mother died of it. Her mother, who survived the disease after a single mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, was diagnosed 18 years ago. Strangely, Burns’ cancer wasn’t of the same genetic makeup as either her sister or mother.

Dr. Josette Spotts, the Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada breast surgeon who’s performed two of Burns’ surgeries — she’s also had a hysterectomy and ovaries removed because estrogen can feed breast cancer tumors — says women increasingly engage in preventive double mastectomies because of an understandable fear.

Typically, doctors recommend it only for patients with specific gene mutations, only about 10 percent of diagnosed breast cancers. Spotts didn’t recommend it for Burns, but understood why she wanted it, given her family history.

A study in “Annals of Surgery” shows that in the late 1990s, 4 percent to 6 percent of women who had cancer in one breast decided to also have their healthy breast removed. By 2012 the number had more than tripled, even though studies have shown only about 3 percent of breast cancer patients will have a cancer develop in their healthy breast.

Spotts believes that one day there will be no more breast cancer surgery, just targeted medications that will allow patients to take a pill to bring the disease under control.

Until that day comes, Burns, who’s undergone chemotherapy and radiation in addition to surgery, expects to live with her fear of the disease.

When it was time for her to leave for Centennial High School, where she works as a counselor, she was smiling that smile again.

Laughing about posing for a picture. Making me laugh.

Given what she’s been through — what she’s going through — how can she be so upbeat?

“I work at it,” she said.

Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Monday in the Health section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter