Heather Britt believes in the power of people working together as a community, and strives to be a community builder as a dance instructor through her business DanceFix. After receiving a troubling cancer diagnosis with a less than promising prognosis, she decided to get a second opinion from the cancer experts at The Christ Hospital Health Network, where her outlook changed for the better thanks to another type of community.
Heather received a new diagnosis of a rare form of breast cancer and a new plan of care thanks to the collaborative efforts of surgical oncologist Jennifer Manders, MD, and medical oncologist Irfan Firdaus, DO, along with The Christ Hospital Health Network’s exclusive collaboration with the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. Membership in this exclusive collaborative means access to tumor board reviews, clinical trials, and groundbreaking research from leading cancer experts nationwide.
In Heather’s case, this community of care meant a new approach to beating cancer and a chance to keep dancing.
Heather's story in her own words:
The radiologist pulled me back into the results room, and she just said, “this is not, you know, great, we're going to get a biopsy,” they said. “But it could be benign.” Then she said, “it’s not going to be benign.”
Me as a person in Cincinnati, I'm known as a community builder. I am a choreographer, a dancer, and a mom. I have a business called DanceFix that's a dance workout program.
The power of dancing in a group in unison and community has its own rewarding benefits. The adrenaline, the endorphins, and then just the friendships and the support for each other when you move together. That is created just naturally by being in rhythm together.
I was stretching and I just for some reason touched my chest and realized, oh, this breast feels different than this breast. The diagnosis was very confusing even to the people that were reading it to me because it came back that it was a small cell breast cancer, which is extremely rare. It's less than 0.1%.
No one really knew what this diagnosis was, but I wanted more information. I felt like I was just in the dark a little bit about are we doing the right thing?
I could feel it growing fast. It literally was growing every day that I was doing a self-exam. So, I kept getting people telling me “you have to go see Dr. Jen Manders at The Christ Hospital, she's amazing.” And so, I thought, “well, maybe I can get a second opinion with The Christ Hospital.”
The buzz before seeing Dr. Manders around town with people that I knew was about the relationship with Dana-Farber. “They're going to know more about your cancer. They're going to have experience with this rare cancer that other people are not going to know about. Or maybe you should go somewhere else.” I need to get more information. I need to know for sure that I'm on the right track.
When I went to Doctor Manders, she said, “I think we're on the wrong track. I think we should not be doing this small cell lung treatment; we should be moving to breast cancer chemotherapy.” And she said that Dana-Farber had seen cases like this, where the pathology said small cell, but that it was actually almost like a phantom pseudo marker.
And so, they said, “let's pivot.” And we did.
And so, I started with my treatment at The Christ Hospital and quickly started seeing results. It started shrinking pretty quickly, the lump, and I just felt so relieved to know that we were on the right track and we were making progress.
I was so overjoyed and knew that I was able to stay right here in Cincinnati and benefit from Dana Ferber and Dr. Manders and Dr. Firdaus and the wonderful nursing team at Christ. So I felt like I had the best of both worlds.
I'm just so excited to be on the other side of this and to be able to move again and dance in the way that I want to do and be surrounded by my community. I am so invigorated by just being in community. It's who I am as a person. And so I know that this is going to benefit me forever as I keep dancing into the future.