My amazing friend, Rose Kushner, was small and bony with a voice like a rusty trumpet. A pioneer. A tigress. She was out there irritating people and making them listen a long time before I came along. When Rose was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974, she had to fight that old surgery roulette system. She went through nineteen surgeons before she found one willing to do the biopsy without the automatic mastectomy. When the biopsy came back malignant, she had to fight for a modified mastectomy instead of the Halsted radical that was still standard fare in a lot of places. And she kept fighting.
Read more about the mighty Rose and other early cancer activists who blazed trails and inspired our vision in
Promise Me.
