November 24, 2025 • 56 mins
Discover how three fearless women transformed breast cancer awareness and inspired generations to advocate for their health, from treatment choices to early detection breakthroughs.
In this episode of Chatting with Betsy, host Betsy Wurzel speaks with award-winning author and historian Judith L. Pearson about the fearless women who transformed breast cancer awareness and patient advocacy. These Breast Cancer Advocacy Pioneers—Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder—helped women gain a voice in their own treatment at a time when decisions were often made for them.
From speaking publicly about diagnosis, to challenging medical standards, to creating the Pink Ribbon Campaign, their work opened doors for future generations. Betsy and Judy also discuss important modern developments, including AI-enhanced mammograms that help detect cancer earlier, and the significance of understanding genetic risks such as the BRCA mutation, especially among Ashkenazi families. Their conversation highlights why speaking up, asking questions, and seeking second opinions can change outcomes. This inspiring interview reminds us that advocacy matters—not just in breast cancer, but in caregiving and everyday health decisions.
Their stories continue to motivate support groups, families, and individuals to take control of their health and support one another. Learn more about Judy and her work at:
https://judithlpearson.com/
🎙 From Passionate World Talk Radio Network — where real conversations matter. Stay informed, stay inspired, and help us keep independent voices alive at www.passionateworldtalkradio.com.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/chatting-with-betsy--4211847/support.
💡 At Passionate World Talk Radio, we believe real conversations matter. Stay inspired and keep listening to Chatting with Betsy at www.passionateworldtalkradio.com.
In this episode of Chatting with Betsy, host Betsy Wurzel speaks with award-winning author and historian Judith L. Pearson about the fearless women who transformed breast cancer awareness and patient advocacy. These Breast Cancer Advocacy Pioneers—Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder—helped women gain a voice in their own treatment at a time when decisions were often made for them.
From speaking publicly about diagnosis, to challenging medical standards, to creating the Pink Ribbon Campaign, their work opened doors for future generations. Betsy and Judy also discuss important modern developments, including AI-enhanced mammograms that help detect cancer earlier, and the significance of understanding genetic risks such as the BRCA mutation, especially among Ashkenazi families. Their conversation highlights why speaking up, asking questions, and seeking second opinions can change outcomes. This inspiring interview reminds us that advocacy matters—not just in breast cancer, but in caregiving and everyday health decisions.
Their stories continue to motivate support groups, families, and individuals to take control of their health and support one another. Learn more about Judy and her work at:
https://judithlpearson.com/
🎙 From Passionate World Talk Radio Network — where real conversations matter. Stay informed, stay inspired, and help us keep independent voices alive at www.passionateworldtalkradio.com.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/chatting-with-betsy--4211847/support.
💡 At Passionate World Talk Radio, we believe real conversations matter. Stay inspired and keep listening to Chatting with Betsy at www.passionateworldtalkradio.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, everyone, this is Betsy Worzel. You're a host of
Chatting with Betsy. I'm Pastia Roll Talk Radio Network, a
subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. I are manstious to educate, enlightened,
and entertained. The views of the guests may not represent
those the hosts of the station, Folks. I am so
(00:24):
excited about my guest today. My guest today is Judith L. Pearson.
This is her third time returning to Chatting with Betsy.
Judy Pearson is an award winning author and writer and
a fabulous historian. If you haven't read any of her books,
(00:45):
I surely suggest that you listen to this podcast and
pick up her newest book, which we're going to discuss today.
And I just want to say radical sisters Shirley Temple, Black,
Rose Kushner, Emily laud In The Dawn of the Breast
Cancer Movement is phenomenal. It is a masterpiece. The research
(01:11):
that went into this book, the inspiration and what these
women went through to bust down that door for future
generations of women to have say in their healthcare. This
book is for not just women, it is for men,
because men get breast cancer also, and they might have
(01:31):
wives or girlfriends who might have breast cancer. And it's
a very important book. And I also want to say,
because I am in the Alzheimer's movement, this book should
be read by anyone who wants to be an advocate
(01:52):
or who is an advocate. And you will read how
three women spoke up and how the breast cancer movement started.
This is what I wish for Alzheimer's. So I want
to welcome Judith L. Pearson, otherwise known as Judy to
Chatting with Petsy. Welcome up, Welcome back, Judy.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, thank you so much. I feel like I shouldn't
even say anything. That was such a great introdution. Well,
just finish right here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You're welcome, Judy, my pleasure. When I was reading this book, Judy,
it brought I mean, I laughed because there's some funny
things in the book, and I cried, uh because I'm
an emotional person what these women went through. But this
their role models, all three of them are such role
(02:45):
models for women, you know, to speak up. And I'm
reading this and I reflect into my own advocacy that
someone has to speak up. And I just highly recommend
this book. Book folks, I'm telling you I would run
after you hear this podcast. You've got a run on
(03:06):
your computer to Amazon dot com Judy's website, which we'll
give you and to order this book. This book is
just phenomenal. What motivated you to write this book, Judy?
And thank you for writing it?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Jo, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
This is the third in an accidental trilogy, and as
you said, you've interviewed me for the other two. The
trilogy is all out of order. The first book and
chronologically would have been the book about Mary Laster, which
came out in twenty three. The last book would have
been From Shadows to Life, which came out in twenty one,
(03:47):
and then this book would actually have been the middle.
And in each case I learned about little tidbits of
the people the event. In some cases I even plagiarize myself,
but I did give myself credit in the foot or
in the end bots. But but you know you just
(04:10):
as yours. As a non fiction and narrative nonfiction writer
a biographer, I cut a wide swath in my research,
researching as much as I possibly can, because I always
know that some of it's going to end up in
the current project, some of it may end up in
other projects, and that's been the case here. And it
(04:34):
was just the truth of the matter is I was
set out. I set out to write a book about
Rose Kushner, who I had learned about in both my
previous books. She was a powerhouse, a boss babe, just amazing.
And my editor at Mayo Clinic Press and my wonderful agents, Danny, said, listen,
(04:58):
we love that you want to tell untold stories, but
we're all in the business to sell books, and it's
easy to sell books with some kind of recognition in
the title. And so it was them who insisted that,
I think on a broader scale, we added in Evelyn
(05:20):
and Shirley, and in all honesty, Betsy, it made the
book so much richer, so perfect the arc of their
advocacy and their legacies, which is perfect.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Really, It's truly amazing how you blended all three of
their causes, you know, with their advocacy of what each
of them went through, and it's just so important. And
I can't stress this enough and might so redundant judy
(05:57):
to the audience, but I've been saying this versus six years.
We have to speak up when there's an injustice. We
must speak up because nothing will change if we don't.
And somebody, you know, has to break that door down
and say, you know what, we want a say in
(06:18):
our treatment. We want better breast care. We want to
say and if we want a biopsy or a mastectomy
or a lumpectomy. And you know, I learned so much
from your book, Judy that I had I mean, I
(06:40):
know what a mastectomy was. I had no idea way
back when what they did to these women, like just
taking their whole breast and their bones out and their
limph nodes. I mean that that that's devastating. Well, in that.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Semi semi defense of doctor William Halstead back in eighty
eighteen nineties, we didn't understand how cancer spread.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
We under didn't understand the limit system, which is the
highway that the spreads cancer fells. And he just felt
that if he got to the root of the cancer,
he could save women's lives and the roots. The word
root is radical in Latin, and so they called it
(07:34):
a radical mass spectomy. And the title radical sisters is
a play on words, because of course we all know
the word radical as something or someone who really is
out there really like takes things to the limits, which
I guess in a sense is also what doctor Hall
said did so his methectomy, he took all the Lympse nodes.
(07:57):
He took the peck muffles, the major and minor peck muscles,
which allow you to raise your hands. So if you've
had a mass spectomy since the nineteen nineties and you
can raise your arm on the side of your mas sectomy,
it is because of these women's voices saying the muscles,
(08:18):
don't unless there's cancer in the muffles, you don't need
to take the muscles, and then again cutting further to
the root, taking ribs and clavicles. That just completely debilitated women.
And not only were they unable to do things, they
were so ashamed by what they looked like, so they hid.
(08:41):
There weren't prosthetics, Their shoulders slumped, you know, they were
so concave on their chests. It was just it was
cruel and horrific for sure, but it was done with
the idea that it would benefit the women. The cruelest
part of all was that those mass eectomies continued long
(09:03):
after it had been declared by the National Institutes of
Health and the National Cancer Institute as not a best practice.
When Rose was on the Phil Donahue Show in nineteen
eighty six, she actually said at that point in time
that something like seventy five sixty sixty I think percent
(09:26):
of surgeons were still doing it and the women never
questioned it. Like you said, you got to speak up.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, that's that is incredible. I remember Shirley Temple Black
speaking about breast cancer and I think that was the
first person who actually said it. And you have a
wonderful story in your book about her inviting the press
(09:53):
in her hospital room. Yeah, before I went to that,
How would it take you to research this book? Because
you're a great research takes well. It's both.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
It's both a good thing and a bad thing. Because
I love to research, that's the good part. The bad
part is sometimes I over research and it just has
to stop and I have to write. Typically my biographies
take me about eighteen months total to research and write,
(10:31):
and then there's time added on to that by the
publishers who then have to do their editing and the
cover design and all of that. So I'm trying to
crank these puppies out every two years. But and sometimes
it's timing people. People forget sometimes that publishing is indeed
a business. So for example, biography, biographies, and narrative nonfiction
(10:57):
typically don't come out in the summer, even though this
book could have perhaps come out in June. The summertime
is beach read season. It's time for you know, the
bodice rippers and the mysteries and the horror books and
all the stuff you see people carrying around in their
beach bags.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Well, my opinion, Judy, this book is for any time
of year. I mean, this is just really will motivate someone,
and I think it's really important, especially for women to
read about these pioneer women, these radical sisters who weren't
(11:40):
afraid to speak up. But now I know in my
own healthcare that I had to speak up. Women are
not believed when we go to a doctor and complain
about something and we know there's something wrong and the
doctor dismisses us. And that's how it was in America
(12:02):
in the sixties, seventies, I'm even going to say eighties
and probably early nineties. Well, yeah, you have to say
about that duty.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's absolutely true. It's and it's also generational. My in
laws that work in their early nineties nineties, and it's
at about this time they're still going to doctor appointments
on their own. But we just recently discovered that my
mother in law was taking too much of a medication
because she was going to two different doctors. She had
(12:34):
been sent to two different doctors to manage some pain
and it was too much. And instead of saying, now,
wait a minute, I'm already taking this, they are of
the generation where you don't question so. And there's an
age related thing. It's a culturally related thing, but it's
and you can certainly respectfully say I don't understand, I'd
(12:56):
like more information, give me some time to research it.
In almost every doctor's office you go into today, statements
about you know your body, your choice, and ask questions
and you deserve a second opinion. They're very free with
those statements. And so you need to follow up on that,
right because it certainly was not in existence, as you said,
(13:20):
really until this century. And quite honestly, I mean, they
didn't even test, they didn't even include women in clinical
trials until the nineteen nineties. Think of that, Just think
of that in nineteen nineties, they were still prescribing medications,
heart medications, cancer medications, ambients based on testing that was
(13:43):
men only. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
No, it does that. Not only is that, Julie, but
I introduced someone a few years ago who ran a testing,
you know, testing for research medications, and she told me
that they very seldom these pharmaceutical companies. Know this was
a few years ago, with tests on minorities. And everyone's
(14:12):
makeup is different, and everyone's see hey is different.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Absolutely, and you.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Know it's just not right. And you're right about generational
because my mom was from the silent generation. You know,
you didn't ask questions, you didn't make ways, and here
she has made this dwater will close a tsunami to
be heard because I had to fight. I spoke up
(14:42):
about my husband's disgusting hospice care, and even after I
follow formal complaints to my mom was like, Betsy, won't
you just be quiet. It's not going to bring that back.
Just forget about it. And I said, you don't understand.
I know I'm not going to bring that back. What
about the next person? What about them? Who's going to
(15:04):
speak up for them? And that's what these women did.
These women spoke up for us and that's, you know,
what people have to understand. I was so touched by
this book, Judy. I think I was more touched by
(15:24):
this book. And I loved your other two books, but
I think I was more touched and inspired by this book.
This is just a genius masterpiece. And my humble opinion,
Oh you're welcome, and it's the truth. Can you tell
(15:46):
us about Shirley Temple's role in the early breast cancer
movement and tell us about a little about her background.
I just love Shirley Temple movies and she was just
I just love through.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well. And the press had a very hard time letting
go of the fact that she was a childhood actress.
It's really really funny. Even while she's running for Congress,
which she did not succeed, she was appointed as a
delegate to the United Nations, she developed breast cancer, all
these things, and every article, every newspaper article begins with
(16:26):
Shirley Temple, famous child star, and I thought, oh, my goodness.
Then they, especially when it was politically, when there were
political articles, they made fun of her being little miss
Marker and the good Ship Lollipop and that kind of thing.
So in nineteen seventy two, she was doing something that
very few women did. Her doctor had told her decades
(16:49):
earlier how to do self breast exams, and so in
nineteen seventy two, she was doing just that after showering
one morning and found her lump herself. Mammography didn't exist
then as it is today. It was a relative. It
was being studied, but it wasn't a routine thing like
we have today. And so she had privilege, of course,
(17:13):
and she was smart, and she did not want the
Hall said procedure. In fact, her famous quote is the
doctor can make the incision, but I'll make the decision. Also,
the protocol at the time was what was called the
one step procedure, where a woman would be admitted to
(17:34):
the hospital because it was an inpatient procedure at the time,
for a biopsy and if the surgeon found cancer after
the the analysis was done, oh can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Now? I can hear you. I just couldn't hear what
you said before it. Yeah, now I can't.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Oh, oh, I'm sorry. If the doctor found cancer after
having removed the tumor back and immediately did a mass sectomy,
which left women you know, they woke up from their anesthesia,
pawing at their chests to see if they so high breast.
They had no time to psychologically prepare it was. It
(18:13):
was really awful. And so Shirley said, I want just
the tumor removed. You do the analysis, the pathology will
discuss it, and then I'll have a mass sectomy. And
again she was a woman of privilege both financially and
had fame, and so they and she went to Stanford,
(18:34):
which was, you know, certainly more progressive than maybe the
middle of the country. And so she had her wishes followed,
and then, as you said, convened. The first thing she
thought she was coming back around the next day after
her surgery. The first thing she thought was how can
(18:54):
I help my sisters. So she convened that press conference
in her hospital room with a guardina in her ear
to tell women, if you feel something, don't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yes. And back then when a Shorey Temple Black had
her surgery, you didn't even discuss cancer. It was whispered,
I think, especially with women. Yeah, it was like, oh, you.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Know, funny, that's a funny. Breasts are so adored and
yet so ignored when they get sick. So you never
talked about your own breast in public, and you didn't
talk about cancer in general in those days because they
(19:46):
had a very poor prognosis. They were just beginning to
use chemotherapy. They hadn't really been able to control radiation
treatment yet they in terms of using enough but not
too much. So unless you were able to get your
tumor looked at early enough, it just had a bad prognosis,
(20:08):
so people didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
That is so true. My mom had a friend, Tuessy.
She unfortunately was diagnosed with liver cancer. This is back
in nineteen eighty. But when I read her history because
I worked in the hospital and she had to be
a patient, she had breast cancer like way back, you know,
(20:34):
probably in the sixties and when this is before, way
before hippo lost people. So what I told my mom
about her friend or bff, she said, oh, no, Tessa
didn't have breast cancer. She would have told me. No,
she may not have told you because they didn't talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Back then, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It was most of women's health was was under avail
of secrecies. Doctors didn't explain procedures, patients didn't talk about illnesses.
Family entire families didn't know that mothers and grandmothers had
(21:17):
had cancer or had had breast cancer. They just simply
died without ever having had a chance to communicate that
to their families.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And even the doctors. Uh, at one point, they didn't
even tell the patients sometimes that they had cancer. They
told the family, but not the patient. Even imagine that.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And that was that was really of frequent practice when
it came to women. They just didn't think that we
had the constitution to be able to withstand such a
shocking diagnosis, and in general that if you told the
patient they had cancer again because it was such a
poor prognosis, they'd just give up and die. Which, yeah,
(22:07):
it's hard to imagine, but it went on not all
that long ago.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, and women didn't have a choice, and now we do.
And it's because of the women who you know, spoke up.
When I used to be in my car and do
videos about awareness raising awareness on Alzheimer's, I would say,
how do you think the breast cancer movement got started?
(22:37):
You know, people spoke up, they banded together and they said,
we're we're not taking us anymore. We want treatment, we
want to say we want to cure.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
That's right and most important that research be done, that
money be acocated to measure it with the with the
amount of diagnoses, which by this time were coming at
epidemic rates. Women were being diagnosed and dying just as
if it was the bubonic plague. And in truth as
(23:11):
you read, and I think it was so fascinating in
the in the early nineties, as the AIDS movement was
gaining scene late eighties or nineties, the breast cancer advocates
looked at that and said, oh, we see, you gotta
get angry, and that's what they did.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yes, I've mentioned that too, Yes, the ADH movement. I
read that in your book, and you know the the
Ribbon campaign, which we'll get into. I do want to
do a side note here, Julie before I forget, because
I read an art and I thought of you when
I was reading this article with this night there was
an art magazine, AARP and a woman she went for
(23:55):
her yearly Mammia Graham, and she used I paid for
this thought. So if you pay forty dollars extra for
the AI, I guess I screening. You know what I'm
talking about. It Detective her cancer very early because she
had paid that extra forty dollars. And I just want
(24:18):
to tell the audience, you know, if you have the money,
maybe you could work out some kind of payment or something.
Spend that extra forty dollars. Don't get yourself, you know,
coffee that month to save up. It's so important get
that al ammagram. I do that.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Half half of the women in the country have dense
breast tissues, and mimography cannot see through dense tissues. So
the which is exactly what happened to me. Two months
before I found a lump in my cleavage, I had
a clean mamogram, and so radiologists must now put on
(24:59):
your mamography letter even if it's clean, congratulations. But then
if you have dense tissue, you may want to do
some kind of a follow up procedure. The follow up
procedure has been an ultrasound, which is again what I've
been doing now for fourteen years since my cancer. This
takes the place of the ultrasound. It is not covered
(25:19):
by insurance yet, but I believe that it will not
be too much longer where before it will be because
a forty dollars AI review of your mammogram is much
less expensive to the insurance company than a quarter of
a million dollars for breast cancer treatment, which is about
(25:42):
what a run of the mill breast cancer diagnosis runs today.
So it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. Thank you for bringing
that up.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yes, oh, you're welcome. I set oh, I gotta tell
this at the interview with Tuty. Okay, it's very uh
important and it's you know, well worth the peace of
mind that you get from it. And talk us about
(26:11):
Rose Kushner. No, she was mentioned in the book Mary
Laskar Chris. I forgot it was mentioned in that she
was mentioned in the book. But she sounded like a
real bull of fire, like justin.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
She really was very.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Vibrant person, very energetic and didn't take anything from anybody.
I just loved reading about her.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
She absolutely was. She was a wife, a mother, a journalist.
She loved to write, had been a writer all of
her life and was trying so hard to break it in,
break into the big time. She lived in Baltimore, and
she was Jewish, so her articles were published in the
(26:56):
Jewish newspapers, and so she was thrill fat. But she
really wanted the Washington Post in New York Times, she
wanted other people to pay attention. She wrote about the
Vietnam War. She wrote about tay Sacks disease for syndrome,
which is a syndrome that affected again, much like triple
(27:17):
negative breast cancer and the Brocco mutation, tay Sax affects
the Jewish population in a much larger percentage. It's something
that newborns are born with and has no chance of survival,
So it was a really big topic in the nineteen
seventies and eighties. And one day, one night, taking a bath,
(27:41):
also discovered a lump in her breast and immediately went
to the neighboring National Library of Medicine on the NIH
campus to learn about breast cancer, which she hadn't even
been diagnosed with yet. But she was a researcher just
like me, and she was like, well, I'm going to
go read up on it while I wait for my
doctor's appointment later today. And she was shocked that there
(28:02):
was nothing available for the average woman to read. There
were lots of medical books, and then she was further
shocked to learn about the one step procedures that I
just talked about about the radical mess steptomy. So she
was absolutely, absolutely adamant that she was not going to
undergo the one step. Made her doctor sign a paper saying,
(28:25):
if I find cancer, I will only do the biopsy,
I will not remove the breast. And when she awoke,
her doctor said, well, you've just killed yourself. You have
breast cancer. And let me tell you. I interviewed an
oncologist who knew Rose Kushner and who said at the time,
then and now, there is no medical reason for that
(28:48):
one step, because the tumor you find today has been
growing for months, probably years, and waiting another week or
two to sort of wreck your mind around the idea
that you have cancer will not hurt you at all,
with the exception of very few women who perhaps couldn't
undergo anesthesia a second time, because, as I said, it
(29:11):
was an impatient process with general anesthesia. So Rose started
then looking for a doctor who would not do the
radical mess viectimy, and she was called a kook. She
was told, nobody is going to tell me how to
do my job. She had to travel from Baltimore to
Buffalo to the Rochester Cancer Center in order to find
(29:34):
a surgeon who was routinely performing the modified treatment, and
the article she wrote about her treatment, and then the
book that she wrote with the article in particular, all
of a sudden after Betty fords diagnosis a few months later,
became very popular and was published in the Washington Post.
(29:56):
And she joked, if I'd known breast cancer would get
me into the Post, I would have agreed to have
have it long ago.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I got understand her humor. Yeah, darts was the humor that, now,
after she had breast cancer, that she continue writing articles
in the Jewish newspapers for people who spoke Yiddish to
know about breast cancer and the treatments.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
She might have. And she actually she did not, although
she grew up speaking Yiddish until she was about five.
That's all that was spoken at home. But she but
I don't believe she could write it. So what she
was writing in the Jewish news papers were were articles
of Jewish interests, but they were actually general interested as well.
(30:48):
So whether or not they were, they continue to be
published in thosepapers, I would assume, so I would assume
they would even you know, be picked up. But she
wisely realized they were local newspapers, so she widely realized
wisely realized that she needed a much wider net to
get this information out, and so began writing the book
(31:09):
that came out almost a year to the day after
her own discovery about It's called Why Me, and it
is everything you could ever want to know about breast cancer,
you know, from the moment that you find a lump,
all the way through to the what's next kind of question?
(31:30):
And it too was a brilliant, groundbreaking thing.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That is to me just mind boggling. And I know
because I'm Jewish that Ashkanazi Jewish Eastern European they're more
prone to getting breast cancer. So was you're of Ashkanazi? Uh?
(31:59):
How are you origin? You know, get your your mammograms.
It's so important. And the gee, what's it called? The big?
Is the big? You had mentioned that earlier.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's the broca. It's a mutation rock and so the
br for breast and the CA for cancer. But let
me tell you that's only responsible for Bracca. Mutation is
only responsible for about sixteen one five percent of cancers.
So just because you don't have the mutation, or a
(32:35):
relative doesn't have the mutation, that doesn't mean you don't
have to be vigilant. So there's something about so in
our family. I am Ashkenazi, although I am not Jewish
by faith. But my aunt, my maternal aunt, had triple negative,
which is also widely diagnosed among Ashkanazi women. She also
(32:58):
had triple negative as I did. She died as a
metastasized disease. But I do not have the mutation. I
don't have any of fifty mutations that we know now,
so we're not safe. Just because we don't have the
Brocco mutation, we still have to be so vigilant about
our breast peals. I didn't even know I was ONZI
(33:19):
until this book. I was like, oh, oh wow, I
need to find this out. Yeah, but my great grandmother
was born in Prussia, which is you know, was broken
up after World War Two. But we were one brother.
But she was my aunt and mother's grandmother, my great grandmother,
so I didn't even know we had that we were that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Oh well, my mother's parents came from Russia, which is
part they came from is now the Ukraine. But the
Baka mutation is that with everyone, or is the more
prominent in Ashkenazi women, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Non non Jewish women, non Ashkenazi women also might have
the Bronco mutation. And again when you think back to
your heritage, which is much easier to search out now
because of the genetic testing. You know, we can twenty
three and meters and all of those plus the ancestors
(34:25):
dot com. But there can be lots of people just
like I was, who have that heritage and don't realize it. So,
but it is more prevalent. It is more prevalent among
Jewish women. Triple negative breast cancer and the Broca mutation
more prevalent among Ashkenazi. So again if you're if you're
(34:47):
Jewish and not Ashkenazi, you're less likely if you're not
Jewish and you don't know if you're Ashkanazi, you know,
it's a roller dice.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. I go every every year.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And I and just go other things to pass along,
pass along if you do have the mutations or any
genetic mutation. But let's talk about the Brocco one. It
is not uniquely to women because when my when my
oncologists had me tested, I said, well, it doesn't matter.
I have brothers. I have a brother, no sisters, I
(35:27):
have sons, no daughters, and she said it absolutely matters
because men also can pass on that gene and we
now know it's also connected to prostate cancer. So just
because I have any female family members doesn't mean that
it might not still be passed on to your granddaughters,
your nieces, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
That's the point that you brought that out, Judia. Thank you,
because I heard that a long time ago, that it
could be passed down to the sons and they could
get a different form of cancer from that Bacca mutation gene.
So that's important to know. And you know, people don't
(36:11):
think of men even getting breast cancer, but they can
and they.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Do, that's right, a very small percentage.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, excuse me, do get breast cancer. It's so important
duty and your book brings it out to be so
vigilant in your own health care and to educate yourself
and I say this all the time about other diseases.
(36:42):
You know, educate yourself about your family history if you
can know your family history of inherited diseases and those
that aren't, and to know you know about medications, and
to research so that you are you know, what if
it pay but a customer, I mean, that's how I
(37:03):
look at it, I'm a customer, doctor's providing a service,
and they need to listen to me.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's right, absolutely, absolutely, And I think I think the
other thing that's really lovely about these three ladies, particularly
later on Evelyn latter Essay, Latter's daughter in law, again
a woman of great privilege, a woman of great wealth,
(37:30):
and she too them this had this desire to give
back to the other women who will follow behind them.
And in Evelyn's case, she said, you know, we've asked
women for decades to buy our products. Now it's time
that we give back to them. And there's something it's
(37:53):
called pro social behavior. I call it a second act.
Is basically volunteering, but when you do it after a
life crisis, the great health benefits of volunteering are even
more meaningful. After a life crisis, it gives meaning to
(38:13):
something that's happened to you or a loved one. As
you've talked about advocating for your husband and continuing to
do so even after he was gone. It's exactly what
you said. If your work can help someone else, that'll
make it all worthwhile. But in the meantime, shining your
light out there, it takes away all of the power
(38:35):
of your anxieties, your fears, your grief. You're asking what
if if you're focusing on someone or something else, you
don't have any faith for any of that negativity.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
That's true, That is very true. And I fail you
when we share our stories, and I said this all
the time, it's not for sympathy, it's not for pity.
It's so the public can be aware of what is
available to them, learn from our mistakes, and you know,
(39:10):
we connect. I felt that we connect our humanity to
each other when we share experiences. I mean, these three
women were powerhouses. They had breast cancer and they powered
through to help others. And of course I'm familiar with
(39:31):
the Lord accompanied by their books much to my pocket
books the Mice. But can you talk us about Evelyn
Lauder And I love how you just in detailed such
detail told each women's history again, phenomenal book. So yeah,
(39:56):
tell us about even Water and how she became involved
with I mean, she just did so much in having
a breast cancer center and you know the pink ribbon campaign, right,
so you could discuss that.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, sure, and the other thing too that I tried
to do in all of my books. My first books
were about World War Two, so they had a lot
of history built into them. But I think that biographies
are so much richer when you, as a reader understand
(40:36):
what's going on in the world around the subjects, because
today these phenomenal the phenomenal work of these three women
is sort of you know, people scratch their heads, well,
what do you mean there wasn't a breast cancer Awareness month?
And what do you mean there wasn't a pink ribbon.
So you have to understand the context in which these
women lay it lived. So in the nineteen eighties. Evelyn
(40:58):
was diagnosed in nineteen eight eighty eight, and when she
was on the other side of her treatment, she realized
how difficult it was for her, with a private car
and driver to crisscross New York City to get her treatment,
to get her wig, to learn about nutrition and exercise
(41:20):
to get herself back up and going to increase her energy.
And so she sat down with her on colleges who
became a very very good friend, doctor Larry Norton, who's
still at Memorial Sloan Kettering today, and she said, I
would like to create a breast center based on the
department store concept. A woman can go into a department
(41:41):
store by cosmetics hopefully from the essay latter counter, and
then also go get shoes, and go buy clothing for
their children, and go get a pot, a new pan,
all in one building. My vision for a breast center
would be the same thing. You can get screening mammograms,
(42:02):
because by then mamograms had hit the scene. But you
can also have your treatments, have all of your follow
up visits, get a wig, learn about makeup applications during cancer,
learn about new diets, and exercise, have some psychosocial help
(42:23):
all of it facility, and that became the Evelyna H.
Slaughter Breast Center at Memorials phone Kettering. Then she and
Norton also created the Breast Cancer Research Fund to give
grants to researchers who otherwise might not have been approved
(42:43):
for grants. It's sort of a chicken or the egg thing.
You can't get the big money without having done significant research,
but you can't do significant research without the big money.
So they wanted to fund researchers who needed a boot
that they had something that showed promise and they needed
(43:03):
a boost, and wedged in between those two miraculous and
giant accomplishments. Evelyn, along with her friend Alexandra Penny, who's
still living and very vibrant and who I had many
fun conversations with. The two of them were friends and
(43:25):
were trying to find something to increase breast cancer awareness,
of which there was very little then there's much more now.
They came up with They actually had learned about a
woman in California who was making and passing out peach
color dribbons for awareness. So they contacted her and said, hey,
(43:48):
let's do this together. You know, Water had twenty five
hundred beauty counters around the world. Alexandra with Self magazine
had two million readers. We can really gets this ball rolling.
And the California woman said no and hung up on them.
So they were She said, you're just going to be
(44:09):
uh uh, advertise it, make money from it, and I
don't want that. And they were confused by this. So
lawyers said, well, that's just one color. Come up with
the different colors, and so they did and came up
with the ubiquitous pink ribbon. It's everywhere, especially this month.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah. Yeah, but as you said that.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
It's it's it's important to remember that breast cancer is
ever green. You know, two of my two of my
radical sisters were diagnosed in November Roses and diagnosed in June.
I was diagnosed in April. October is a wonderful reminder.
But breast cancer is every month. So that makes this
(45:00):
book pretty evergreen as well.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yes, that's what. You took the words right out of
my mouth, because I was going to say that, you know,
breast cancer awareness, just like I believe all timers awareness
is not just on a month that it's their awareness month.
Every month we should be aware. We need to take
(45:25):
care of our bodies and questions and you know, go
for another opinion. You know, if you don't have peace
of mind, go for two or three opinions, even until
you had a peace of mind. It would have been
really something that these three women would have connected with
(45:47):
each other, but they didn't. What a force that would
have been that those three together.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I always sprints up photographs of whoever I'm writing about
so that I can look at them every day and say, Okay,
where are we going to go today? And I very
often felt as though they were in the room with
me and in conversation with me. They certainly would have
(46:17):
been aware of one another. There's no doubt about that.
But just it's sort of like legos, you know, they
just built one on top of the other, and certainly
they their shoulders are the shoulders on which today's breast
cancer movement still continuing rest.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yes, that and that's what happens. You know, you had
the pioneers, and then the other people learned from the
original pioneers, and it builds up. And I'm glad that
there is such a huge breast cancer awareness. I'm glad
(46:59):
that now Alzheimer's caregivers are being more vocal. There's much
more available now. And why is that? Because people spoke up.
It took a long time, very long time. I've been
at this. I went in my car eight years ago
and people just did not want to speak up about
(47:20):
their journeys. We need to speak up about our journeys. Judy,
what do you hope your book would accomplish? And what
did you envision as your primary audience for this book,
because I think it's for everybody.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Well, so I think two things in terms of what
I'd like to accomplish. First of all, that readers consider
these three women, two who were famous and wealthy and
one who is just a regular gal like me doing
(47:57):
what they did, you know, taking their second act to
the limits to make things better for the people who
came behind them. And the other important thing to remember
is that doing something you don't first of all, you
don't have to go large. You can do small second
acts and still have makes an impact in others' lives.
(48:19):
But my very favorite quote that I repeat often from
the cultural anthropologist Margaret Meade is never doubt that a
small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
it's the only thing that ever has. You don't have
to be famous, you don't have to have a lot
of money. You just have to, as you said at
(48:41):
the outset, speak up, just ask questions, advocate for yourself,
advocate for others, advocate for those who are yet to come.
But speak up.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yes, that's so important, Jullie. What's the next in the
horizon for you? You are such a talented writer and historians, well,
do you have a sneak cheek?
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I'm leaving the world, which is kind of hard to do,
and I'm writing about an amazing woman whose work, whose
major work occurred during the nineteen fifties, which is sort
of a forgotten decade for women. You know, there were
the Rosie derivators in the forties, and there were the
(49:31):
Women's Livers and Marchers in the sixties, but the fifties
is a really interesting decade. And I'm really excited about
writing this book. I'm keeping her name under wraps until
the contract is signed, but I'm already well into the
research and I'm super excited about it.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Oh wow'll do you all have to come back with
that book, That's for sure. It's always the joy talking
to you. Judy work and people find you find your book.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So my website is Judith L. Pearson dot com and
that's t E A R.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
S O N.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
On Instagram. I'm Judas P. Wright and I want to
remind oh, and the book is available everywhere books are sold,
so whether online, in independent bookstores, brick and mortars. I
love book clubs. Invite me to your book club. I
don't even have to come, we can zoom. It'll be
big fun. And I also want to remind people that
(50:36):
if you on every one of my books pages on
my website, if you scroll down, there's a button that
says got the book. Get an autograph, and if you
click that and fill out a little form, it'll notify
me and I'll sign a book plate. It's he's a
book plate that you can put on the inside of
(50:56):
your books. I can't guarantee you'll increase the value, at
least if it has your name, it'll you know, you'll
know whose book it is. But yeah, it makes it
great fun for regular mails. It makes it great fun
for gifts buying. Anytime of year, you get an autograph.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Uh. Yes, Well, Judy, I can't thank you enough for
writing this book. And book clubs, if you're out there
support groups, breast cancer support groups, buy this book and
buy Judy on a zoom meeting and discuss this book.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
And we didn't even like I feel like I just
barely touched the surface because there were so much of us,
these three women. I'd be here for hours today, folks. Uh, So,
go on Judy's website, which will be in the blog
that Genny Waite's the station manager, rights and produces the show.
But buy this book. Buy it for young women so
(52:02):
that they know the history of these three radical sisters,
of these three wonderful, amazing, aspiring women. I encourage everyone
to buy this book, read it, share it, and let's
have open communication. If you want to be an advocate
(52:22):
of whatever clothes you choose, read this book. I guarantee you,
after you read this book, you're going to want to
be an advocate for whatever clothes you want to be
an advocate for. And it will teach you to speak up.
You're welcome to question a doctor. They may not like
to be questioned. But you know what, that's too bad.
(52:43):
You're the customer, they are providing the service. You have
a right right, you have a right to speak up.
I remember when I went for I think I might
have been my first Um, I may have Graham and
that had to be And yeah, it was in the
eighties and I went in and I he goes. The
(53:05):
guy was very rude, the doctor, and he said, what
are you here for? And I said, because my breast
are lumpy, goes, you have lumps all over And I said, well,
so I want to get checked. That's why I want
to get checked. You know, I was in my mid
twenties and I do have you know, you know, some
(53:27):
women just have cistic breasts and I want to get checked.
But with his attitude, I could see why women would
not want to come back because he made you feel like,
what are you doing there? So yeah, that is so
(53:48):
you know what, folks, just speak up, speak up for
your family, speak up for yourself. And that's why I
had a show. I had this show because I want
to help people. I want to provide you with resources
that I did not have, that were not available or
that just got created. And Judy Pearson, she's a wonderful resource.
(54:12):
Her books are wonderful resources, and I'm telling you you
will be inspired and motivated. I'm inspired and motivated just
talking to you, Judy, So thank you for writing your book.
You're welcome. Thank you for friding your book, doing this research.
You're welcome. You're welcome. My pleasure. And I want to
(54:34):
thank Lilia Coldwell. See all the pressure Old Talk radio
network makes this all possible. I want to thank you
the listeners, Thank you for listening. Subscribing if you don't
have Ray, subscribe it is for free and Spotify Spreaker.
iHeart Amazon Music. You could program Alexia to chatting with Betsy.
(54:55):
And I want people to know about this wonderful book.
Please share the show. If you know someone who has
bread cancer, had breast cancer. Even if they don't. This
book needs to be read. It really does. And I
just can't say that enough. And if I found redundant,
(55:16):
so be it. That's how as soon as I am
about this book? Is it already bestseller? Judy? Is this
already bestseller?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
It's not yet, but I sure hope it gets fair.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
It will be, it will be. I'm surprised it's not already.
But it was just released this month, wasn't it? Or
it was the last month. Time goes by so fast.
Last month, time goes by so fast. So help Judy
make this the bestseller, folks, and invite her to your
book clubs. You will not be sorry. As a matter
(55:51):
of fact, you will be very glad that you didn't.
Judy's a great speaker. Go look her up on her website,
which will be in Le Blanc. And as I always
say on my show, you could follow me on Facebook.
Betsy E. Worzel w or Z E l And in
a world would you can be anything? Please be kind
(56:13):
and shine your life right because we need it now
more than ever before. This is Betsy Worzel, your hosts
of Chatting with Betsy and Patrick Oul Talk Radio Network
a subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. Bye bye, Now
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Are you still there?
Hello, everyone, this is Betsy Worzel. You're a host of
Chatting with Betsy. I'm Pastia Roll Talk Radio Network, a
subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. I are manstious to educate, enlightened,
and entertained. The views of the guests may not represent
those the hosts of the station, Folks. I am so
(00:24):
excited about my guest today. My guest today is Judith L. Pearson.
This is her third time returning to Chatting with Betsy.
Judy Pearson is an award winning author and writer and
a fabulous historian. If you haven't read any of her books,
(00:45):
I surely suggest that you listen to this podcast and
pick up her newest book, which we're going to discuss today.
And I just want to say radical sisters Shirley Temple, Black,
Rose Kushner, Emily laud In The Dawn of the Breast
Cancer Movement is phenomenal. It is a masterpiece. The research
(01:11):
that went into this book, the inspiration and what these
women went through to bust down that door for future
generations of women to have say in their healthcare. This
book is for not just women, it is for men,
because men get breast cancer also, and they might have
(01:31):
wives or girlfriends who might have breast cancer. And it's
a very important book. And I also want to say,
because I am in the Alzheimer's movement, this book should
be read by anyone who wants to be an advocate
(01:52):
or who is an advocate. And you will read how
three women spoke up and how the breast cancer movement started.
This is what I wish for Alzheimer's. So I want
to welcome Judith L. Pearson, otherwise known as Judy to
Chatting with Petsy. Welcome up, Welcome back, Judy.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, thank you so much. I feel like I shouldn't
even say anything. That was such a great introdution. Well,
just finish right here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You're welcome, Judy, my pleasure. When I was reading this book, Judy,
it brought I mean, I laughed because there's some funny
things in the book, and I cried, uh because I'm
an emotional person what these women went through. But this
their role models, all three of them are such role
(02:45):
models for women, you know, to speak up. And I'm
reading this and I reflect into my own advocacy that
someone has to speak up. And I just highly recommend
this book. Book folks, I'm telling you I would run
after you hear this podcast. You've got a run on
(03:06):
your computer to Amazon dot com Judy's website, which we'll
give you and to order this book. This book is
just phenomenal. What motivated you to write this book, Judy?
And thank you for writing it?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Jo, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
This is the third in an accidental trilogy, and as
you said, you've interviewed me for the other two. The
trilogy is all out of order. The first book and
chronologically would have been the book about Mary Laster, which
came out in twenty three. The last book would have
been From Shadows to Life, which came out in twenty one,
(03:47):
and then this book would actually have been the middle.
And in each case I learned about little tidbits of
the people the event. In some cases I even plagiarize myself,
but I did give myself credit in the foot or
in the end bots. But but you know you just
(04:10):
as yours. As a non fiction and narrative nonfiction writer
a biographer, I cut a wide swath in my research,
researching as much as I possibly can, because I always
know that some of it's going to end up in
the current project, some of it may end up in
other projects, and that's been the case here. And it
(04:34):
was just the truth of the matter is I was
set out. I set out to write a book about
Rose Kushner, who I had learned about in both my
previous books. She was a powerhouse, a boss babe, just amazing.
And my editor at Mayo Clinic Press and my wonderful agents, Danny, said, listen,
(04:58):
we love that you want to tell untold stories, but
we're all in the business to sell books, and it's
easy to sell books with some kind of recognition in
the title. And so it was them who insisted that,
I think on a broader scale, we added in Evelyn
(05:20):
and Shirley, and in all honesty, Betsy, it made the
book so much richer, so perfect the arc of their
advocacy and their legacies, which is perfect.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Really, It's truly amazing how you blended all three of
their causes, you know, with their advocacy of what each
of them went through, and it's just so important. And
I can't stress this enough and might so redundant judy
(05:57):
to the audience, but I've been saying this versus six years.
We have to speak up when there's an injustice. We
must speak up because nothing will change if we don't.
And somebody, you know, has to break that door down
and say, you know what, we want a say in
(06:18):
our treatment. We want better breast care. We want to
say and if we want a biopsy or a mastectomy
or a lumpectomy. And you know, I learned so much
from your book, Judy that I had I mean, I
(06:40):
know what a mastectomy was. I had no idea way
back when what they did to these women, like just
taking their whole breast and their bones out and their
limph nodes. I mean that that that's devastating. Well, in that.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Semi semi defense of doctor William Halstead back in eighty
eighteen nineties, we didn't understand how cancer spread.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
We under didn't understand the limit system, which is the
highway that the spreads cancer fells. And he just felt
that if he got to the root of the cancer,
he could save women's lives and the roots. The word
root is radical in Latin, and so they called it
(07:34):
a radical mass spectomy. And the title radical sisters is
a play on words, because of course we all know
the word radical as something or someone who really is
out there really like takes things to the limits, which
I guess in a sense is also what doctor Hall
said did so his methectomy, he took all the Lympse nodes.
(07:57):
He took the peck muffles, the major and minor peck muscles,
which allow you to raise your hands. So if you've
had a mass spectomy since the nineteen nineties and you
can raise your arm on the side of your mas sectomy,
it is because of these women's voices saying the muscles,
(08:18):
don't unless there's cancer in the muffles, you don't need
to take the muscles, and then again cutting further to
the root, taking ribs and clavicles. That just completely debilitated women.
And not only were they unable to do things, they
were so ashamed by what they looked like, so they hid.
(08:41):
There weren't prosthetics, Their shoulders slumped, you know, they were
so concave on their chests. It was just it was
cruel and horrific for sure, but it was done with
the idea that it would benefit the women. The cruelest
part of all was that those mass eectomies continued long
(09:03):
after it had been declared by the National Institutes of
Health and the National Cancer Institute as not a best practice.
When Rose was on the Phil Donahue Show in nineteen
eighty six, she actually said at that point in time
that something like seventy five sixty sixty I think percent
(09:26):
of surgeons were still doing it and the women never
questioned it. Like you said, you got to speak up.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, that's that is incredible. I remember Shirley Temple Black
speaking about breast cancer and I think that was the
first person who actually said it. And you have a
wonderful story in your book about her inviting the press
(09:53):
in her hospital room. Yeah, before I went to that,
How would it take you to research this book? Because
you're a great research takes well. It's both.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
It's both a good thing and a bad thing. Because
I love to research, that's the good part. The bad
part is sometimes I over research and it just has
to stop and I have to write. Typically my biographies
take me about eighteen months total to research and write,
(10:31):
and then there's time added on to that by the
publishers who then have to do their editing and the
cover design and all of that. So I'm trying to
crank these puppies out every two years. But and sometimes
it's timing people. People forget sometimes that publishing is indeed
a business. So for example, biography, biographies, and narrative nonfiction
(10:57):
typically don't come out in the summer, even though this
book could have perhaps come out in June. The summertime
is beach read season. It's time for you know, the
bodice rippers and the mysteries and the horror books and
all the stuff you see people carrying around in their
beach bags.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Well, my opinion, Judy, this book is for any time
of year. I mean, this is just really will motivate someone,
and I think it's really important, especially for women to
read about these pioneer women, these radical sisters who weren't
(11:40):
afraid to speak up. But now I know in my
own healthcare that I had to speak up. Women are
not believed when we go to a doctor and complain
about something and we know there's something wrong and the
doctor dismisses us. And that's how it was in America
(12:02):
in the sixties, seventies, I'm even going to say eighties
and probably early nineties. Well, yeah, you have to say
about that duty.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's absolutely true. It's and it's also generational. My in
laws that work in their early nineties nineties, and it's
at about this time they're still going to doctor appointments
on their own. But we just recently discovered that my
mother in law was taking too much of a medication
because she was going to two different doctors. She had
(12:34):
been sent to two different doctors to manage some pain
and it was too much. And instead of saying, now,
wait a minute, I'm already taking this, they are of
the generation where you don't question so. And there's an
age related thing. It's a culturally related thing, but it's
and you can certainly respectfully say I don't understand, I'd
(12:56):
like more information, give me some time to research it.
In almost every doctor's office you go into today, statements
about you know your body, your choice, and ask questions
and you deserve a second opinion. They're very free with
those statements. And so you need to follow up on that,
right because it certainly was not in existence, as you said,
(13:20):
really until this century. And quite honestly, I mean, they
didn't even test, they didn't even include women in clinical
trials until the nineteen nineties. Think of that, Just think
of that in nineteen nineties, they were still prescribing medications,
heart medications, cancer medications, ambients based on testing that was
(13:43):
men only. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
No, it does that. Not only is that, Julie, but
I introduced someone a few years ago who ran a testing,
you know, testing for research medications, and she told me
that they very seldom these pharmaceutical companies. Know this was
a few years ago, with tests on minorities. And everyone's
(14:12):
makeup is different, and everyone's see hey is different.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Absolutely, and you.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Know it's just not right. And you're right about generational
because my mom was from the silent generation. You know,
you didn't ask questions, you didn't make ways, and here
she has made this dwater will close a tsunami to
be heard because I had to fight. I spoke up
(14:42):
about my husband's disgusting hospice care, and even after I
follow formal complaints to my mom was like, Betsy, won't
you just be quiet. It's not going to bring that back.
Just forget about it. And I said, you don't understand.
I know I'm not going to bring that back. What
about the next person? What about them? Who's going to
(15:04):
speak up for them? And that's what these women did.
These women spoke up for us and that's, you know,
what people have to understand. I was so touched by
this book, Judy. I think I was more touched by
(15:24):
this book. And I loved your other two books, but
I think I was more touched and inspired by this book.
This is just a genius masterpiece. And my humble opinion,
Oh you're welcome, and it's the truth. Can you tell
(15:46):
us about Shirley Temple's role in the early breast cancer
movement and tell us about a little about her background.
I just love Shirley Temple movies and she was just
I just love through.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well. And the press had a very hard time letting
go of the fact that she was a childhood actress.
It's really really funny. Even while she's running for Congress,
which she did not succeed, she was appointed as a
delegate to the United Nations, she developed breast cancer, all
these things, and every article, every newspaper article begins with
(16:26):
Shirley Temple, famous child star, and I thought, oh, my goodness.
Then they, especially when it was politically, when there were
political articles, they made fun of her being little miss
Marker and the good Ship Lollipop and that kind of thing.
So in nineteen seventy two, she was doing something that
very few women did. Her doctor had told her decades
(16:49):
earlier how to do self breast exams, and so in
nineteen seventy two, she was doing just that after showering
one morning and found her lump herself. Mammography didn't exist
then as it is today. It was a relative. It
was being studied, but it wasn't a routine thing like
we have today. And so she had privilege, of course,
(17:13):
and she was smart, and she did not want the
Hall said procedure. In fact, her famous quote is the
doctor can make the incision, but I'll make the decision. Also,
the protocol at the time was what was called the
one step procedure, where a woman would be admitted to
(17:34):
the hospital because it was an inpatient procedure at the time,
for a biopsy and if the surgeon found cancer after
the the analysis was done, oh can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Now? I can hear you. I just couldn't hear what
you said before it. Yeah, now I can't.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Oh, oh, I'm sorry. If the doctor found cancer after
having removed the tumor back and immediately did a mass sectomy,
which left women you know, they woke up from their anesthesia,
pawing at their chests to see if they so high breast.
They had no time to psychologically prepare it was. It
(18:13):
was really awful. And so Shirley said, I want just
the tumor removed. You do the analysis, the pathology will
discuss it, and then I'll have a mass sectomy. And
again she was a woman of privilege both financially and
had fame, and so they and she went to Stanford,
(18:34):
which was, you know, certainly more progressive than maybe the
middle of the country. And so she had her wishes followed,
and then, as you said, convened. The first thing she
thought she was coming back around the next day after
her surgery. The first thing she thought was how can
(18:54):
I help my sisters. So she convened that press conference
in her hospital room with a guardina in her ear
to tell women, if you feel something, don't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yes. And back then when a Shorey Temple Black had
her surgery, you didn't even discuss cancer. It was whispered,
I think, especially with women. Yeah, it was like, oh, you.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Know, funny, that's a funny. Breasts are so adored and
yet so ignored when they get sick. So you never
talked about your own breast in public, and you didn't
talk about cancer in general in those days because they
(19:46):
had a very poor prognosis. They were just beginning to
use chemotherapy. They hadn't really been able to control radiation
treatment yet they in terms of using enough but not
too much. So unless you were able to get your
tumor looked at early enough, it just had a bad prognosis,
(20:08):
so people didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
That is so true. My mom had a friend, Tuessy.
She unfortunately was diagnosed with liver cancer. This is back
in nineteen eighty. But when I read her history because
I worked in the hospital and she had to be
a patient, she had breast cancer like way back, you know,
(20:34):
probably in the sixties and when this is before, way
before hippo lost people. So what I told my mom
about her friend or bff, she said, oh, no, Tessa
didn't have breast cancer. She would have told me. No,
she may not have told you because they didn't talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Back then, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It was most of women's health was was under avail
of secrecies. Doctors didn't explain procedures, patients didn't talk about illnesses.
Family entire families didn't know that mothers and grandmothers had
(21:17):
had cancer or had had breast cancer. They just simply
died without ever having had a chance to communicate that
to their families.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And even the doctors. Uh, at one point, they didn't
even tell the patients sometimes that they had cancer. They
told the family, but not the patient. Even imagine that.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And that was that was really of frequent practice when
it came to women. They just didn't think that we
had the constitution to be able to withstand such a
shocking diagnosis, and in general that if you told the
patient they had cancer again because it was such a
poor prognosis, they'd just give up and die. Which, yeah,
(22:07):
it's hard to imagine, but it went on not all
that long ago.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, and women didn't have a choice, and now we do.
And it's because of the women who you know, spoke up.
When I used to be in my car and do
videos about awareness raising awareness on Alzheimer's, I would say,
how do you think the breast cancer movement got started?
(22:37):
You know, people spoke up, they banded together and they said,
we're we're not taking us anymore. We want treatment, we
want to say we want to cure.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
That's right and most important that research be done, that
money be acocated to measure it with the with the
amount of diagnoses, which by this time were coming at
epidemic rates. Women were being diagnosed and dying just as
if it was the bubonic plague. And in truth as
(23:11):
you read, and I think it was so fascinating in
the in the early nineties, as the AIDS movement was
gaining scene late eighties or nineties, the breast cancer advocates
looked at that and said, oh, we see, you gotta
get angry, and that's what they did.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yes, I've mentioned that too, Yes, the ADH movement. I
read that in your book, and you know the the
Ribbon campaign, which we'll get into. I do want to
do a side note here, Julie before I forget, because
I read an art and I thought of you when
I was reading this article with this night there was
an art magazine, AARP and a woman she went for
(23:55):
her yearly Mammia Graham, and she used I paid for
this thought. So if you pay forty dollars extra for
the AI, I guess I screening. You know what I'm
talking about. It Detective her cancer very early because she
had paid that extra forty dollars. And I just want
(24:18):
to tell the audience, you know, if you have the money,
maybe you could work out some kind of payment or something.
Spend that extra forty dollars. Don't get yourself, you know,
coffee that month to save up. It's so important get
that al ammagram. I do that.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Half half of the women in the country have dense
breast tissues, and mimography cannot see through dense tissues. So
the which is exactly what happened to me. Two months
before I found a lump in my cleavage, I had
a clean mamogram, and so radiologists must now put on
(24:59):
your mamography letter even if it's clean, congratulations. But then
if you have dense tissue, you may want to do
some kind of a follow up procedure. The follow up
procedure has been an ultrasound, which is again what I've
been doing now for fourteen years since my cancer. This
takes the place of the ultrasound. It is not covered
(25:19):
by insurance yet, but I believe that it will not
be too much longer where before it will be because
a forty dollars AI review of your mammogram is much
less expensive to the insurance company than a quarter of
a million dollars for breast cancer treatment, which is about
(25:42):
what a run of the mill breast cancer diagnosis runs today.
So it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. Thank you for bringing
that up.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yes, oh, you're welcome. I set oh, I gotta tell
this at the interview with Tuty. Okay, it's very uh
important and it's you know, well worth the peace of
mind that you get from it. And talk us about
(26:11):
Rose Kushner. No, she was mentioned in the book Mary
Laskar Chris. I forgot it was mentioned in that she
was mentioned in the book. But she sounded like a
real bull of fire, like justin.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
She really was very.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Vibrant person, very energetic and didn't take anything from anybody.
I just loved reading about her.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
She absolutely was. She was a wife, a mother, a journalist.
She loved to write, had been a writer all of
her life and was trying so hard to break it in,
break into the big time. She lived in Baltimore, and
she was Jewish, so her articles were published in the
(26:56):
Jewish newspapers, and so she was thrill fat. But she
really wanted the Washington Post in New York Times, she
wanted other people to pay attention. She wrote about the
Vietnam War. She wrote about tay Sacks disease for syndrome,
which is a syndrome that affected again, much like triple
(27:17):
negative breast cancer and the Brocco mutation, tay Sax affects
the Jewish population in a much larger percentage. It's something
that newborns are born with and has no chance of survival,
So it was a really big topic in the nineteen
seventies and eighties. And one day, one night, taking a bath,
(27:41):
also discovered a lump in her breast and immediately went
to the neighboring National Library of Medicine on the NIH
campus to learn about breast cancer, which she hadn't even
been diagnosed with yet. But she was a researcher just
like me, and she was like, well, I'm going to
go read up on it while I wait for my
doctor's appointment later today. And she was shocked that there
(28:02):
was nothing available for the average woman to read. There
were lots of medical books, and then she was further
shocked to learn about the one step procedures that I
just talked about about the radical mess steptomy. So she
was absolutely, absolutely adamant that she was not going to
undergo the one step. Made her doctor sign a paper saying,
(28:25):
if I find cancer, I will only do the biopsy,
I will not remove the breast. And when she awoke,
her doctor said, well, you've just killed yourself. You have
breast cancer. And let me tell you. I interviewed an
oncologist who knew Rose Kushner and who said at the time,
then and now, there is no medical reason for that
(28:48):
one step, because the tumor you find today has been
growing for months, probably years, and waiting another week or
two to sort of wreck your mind around the idea
that you have cancer will not hurt you at all,
with the exception of very few women who perhaps couldn't
undergo anesthesia a second time, because, as I said, it
(29:11):
was an impatient process with general anesthesia. So Rose started
then looking for a doctor who would not do the
radical mess viectimy, and she was called a kook. She
was told, nobody is going to tell me how to
do my job. She had to travel from Baltimore to
Buffalo to the Rochester Cancer Center in order to find
(29:34):
a surgeon who was routinely performing the modified treatment, and
the article she wrote about her treatment, and then the
book that she wrote with the article in particular, all
of a sudden after Betty fords diagnosis a few months later,
became very popular and was published in the Washington Post.
(29:56):
And she joked, if I'd known breast cancer would get
me into the Post, I would have agreed to have
have it long ago.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I got understand her humor. Yeah, darts was the humor that, now,
after she had breast cancer, that she continue writing articles
in the Jewish newspapers for people who spoke Yiddish to
know about breast cancer and the treatments.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
She might have. And she actually she did not, although
she grew up speaking Yiddish until she was about five.
That's all that was spoken at home. But she but
I don't believe she could write it. So what she
was writing in the Jewish news papers were were articles
of Jewish interests, but they were actually general interested as well.
(30:48):
So whether or not they were, they continue to be
published in thosepapers, I would assume, so I would assume
they would even you know, be picked up. But she
wisely realized they were local newspapers, so she widely realized
wisely realized that she needed a much wider net to
get this information out, and so began writing the book
(31:09):
that came out almost a year to the day after
her own discovery about It's called Why Me, and it
is everything you could ever want to know about breast cancer,
you know, from the moment that you find a lump,
all the way through to the what's next kind of question?
(31:30):
And it too was a brilliant, groundbreaking thing.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That is to me just mind boggling. And I know
because I'm Jewish that Ashkanazi Jewish Eastern European they're more
prone to getting breast cancer. So was you're of Ashkanazi? Uh?
(31:59):
How are you origin? You know, get your your mammograms.
It's so important. And the gee, what's it called? The big?
Is the big? You had mentioned that earlier.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's the broca. It's a mutation rock and so the
br for breast and the CA for cancer. But let
me tell you that's only responsible for Bracca. Mutation is
only responsible for about sixteen one five percent of cancers.
So just because you don't have the mutation, or a
(32:35):
relative doesn't have the mutation, that doesn't mean you don't
have to be vigilant. So there's something about so in
our family. I am Ashkenazi, although I am not Jewish
by faith. But my aunt, my maternal aunt, had triple negative,
which is also widely diagnosed among Ashkanazi women. She also
(32:58):
had triple negative as I did. She died as a
metastasized disease. But I do not have the mutation. I
don't have any of fifty mutations that we know now,
so we're not safe. Just because we don't have the
Brocco mutation, we still have to be so vigilant about
our breast peals. I didn't even know I was ONZI
(33:19):
until this book. I was like, oh, oh wow, I
need to find this out. Yeah, but my great grandmother
was born in Prussia, which is you know, was broken
up after World War Two. But we were one brother.
But she was my aunt and mother's grandmother, my great grandmother,
so I didn't even know we had that we were that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Oh well, my mother's parents came from Russia, which is
part they came from is now the Ukraine. But the
Baka mutation is that with everyone, or is the more
prominent in Ashkenazi women, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Non non Jewish women, non Ashkenazi women also might have
the Bronco mutation. And again when you think back to
your heritage, which is much easier to search out now
because of the genetic testing. You know, we can twenty
three and meters and all of those plus the ancestors
(34:25):
dot com. But there can be lots of people just
like I was, who have that heritage and don't realize it. So,
but it is more prevalent. It is more prevalent among
Jewish women. Triple negative breast cancer and the Broca mutation
more prevalent among Ashkenazi. So again if you're if you're
(34:47):
Jewish and not Ashkenazi, you're less likely if you're not
Jewish and you don't know if you're Ashkanazi, you know,
it's a roller dice.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. I go every every year.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And I and just go other things to pass along,
pass along if you do have the mutations or any
genetic mutation. But let's talk about the Brocco one. It
is not uniquely to women because when my when my
oncologists had me tested, I said, well, it doesn't matter.
I have brothers. I have a brother, no sisters, I
(35:27):
have sons, no daughters, and she said it absolutely matters
because men also can pass on that gene and we
now know it's also connected to prostate cancer. So just
because I have any female family members doesn't mean that
it might not still be passed on to your granddaughters,
your nieces, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
That's the point that you brought that out, Judia. Thank you,
because I heard that a long time ago, that it
could be passed down to the sons and they could
get a different form of cancer from that Bacca mutation gene.
So that's important to know. And you know, people don't
(36:11):
think of men even getting breast cancer, but they can
and they.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Do, that's right, a very small percentage.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, excuse me, do get breast cancer. It's so important
duty and your book brings it out to be so
vigilant in your own health care and to educate yourself
and I say this all the time about other diseases.
(36:42):
You know, educate yourself about your family history if you
can know your family history of inherited diseases and those
that aren't, and to know you know about medications, and
to research so that you are you know, what if
it pay but a customer, I mean, that's how I
(37:03):
look at it, I'm a customer, doctor's providing a service,
and they need to listen to me.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's right, absolutely, absolutely, And I think I think the
other thing that's really lovely about these three ladies, particularly
later on Evelyn latter Essay, Latter's daughter in law, again
a woman of great privilege, a woman of great wealth,
(37:30):
and she too them this had this desire to give
back to the other women who will follow behind them.
And in Evelyn's case, she said, you know, we've asked
women for decades to buy our products. Now it's time
that we give back to them. And there's something it's
(37:53):
called pro social behavior. I call it a second act.
Is basically volunteering, but when you do it after a
life crisis, the great health benefits of volunteering are even
more meaningful. After a life crisis, it gives meaning to
(38:13):
something that's happened to you or a loved one. As
you've talked about advocating for your husband and continuing to
do so even after he was gone. It's exactly what
you said. If your work can help someone else, that'll
make it all worthwhile. But in the meantime, shining your
light out there, it takes away all of the power
(38:35):
of your anxieties, your fears, your grief. You're asking what
if if you're focusing on someone or something else, you
don't have any faith for any of that negativity.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
That's true, That is very true. And I fail you
when we share our stories, and I said this all
the time, it's not for sympathy, it's not for pity.
It's so the public can be aware of what is
available to them, learn from our mistakes, and you know,
(39:10):
we connect. I felt that we connect our humanity to
each other when we share experiences. I mean, these three
women were powerhouses. They had breast cancer and they powered
through to help others. And of course I'm familiar with
(39:31):
the Lord accompanied by their books much to my pocket
books the Mice. But can you talk us about Evelyn
Lauder And I love how you just in detailed such
detail told each women's history again, phenomenal book. So yeah,
(39:56):
tell us about even Water and how she became involved
with I mean, she just did so much in having
a breast cancer center and you know the pink ribbon campaign, right,
so you could discuss that.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, sure, and the other thing too that I tried
to do in all of my books. My first books
were about World War Two, so they had a lot
of history built into them. But I think that biographies
are so much richer when you, as a reader understand
(40:36):
what's going on in the world around the subjects, because
today these phenomenal the phenomenal work of these three women
is sort of you know, people scratch their heads, well,
what do you mean there wasn't a breast cancer Awareness month?
And what do you mean there wasn't a pink ribbon.
So you have to understand the context in which these
women lay it lived. So in the nineteen eighties. Evelyn
(40:58):
was diagnosed in nineteen eight eighty eight, and when she
was on the other side of her treatment, she realized
how difficult it was for her, with a private car
and driver to crisscross New York City to get her treatment,
to get her wig, to learn about nutrition and exercise
(41:20):
to get herself back up and going to increase her energy.
And so she sat down with her on colleges who
became a very very good friend, doctor Larry Norton, who's
still at Memorial Sloan Kettering today, and she said, I
would like to create a breast center based on the
department store concept. A woman can go into a department
(41:41):
store by cosmetics hopefully from the essay latter counter, and
then also go get shoes, and go buy clothing for
their children, and go get a pot, a new pan,
all in one building. My vision for a breast center
would be the same thing. You can get screening mammograms,
(42:02):
because by then mamograms had hit the scene. But you
can also have your treatments, have all of your follow
up visits, get a wig, learn about makeup applications during cancer,
learn about new diets, and exercise, have some psychosocial help
(42:23):
all of it facility, and that became the Evelyna H.
Slaughter Breast Center at Memorials phone Kettering. Then she and
Norton also created the Breast Cancer Research Fund to give
grants to researchers who otherwise might not have been approved
(42:43):
for grants. It's sort of a chicken or the egg thing.
You can't get the big money without having done significant research,
but you can't do significant research without the big money.
So they wanted to fund researchers who needed a boot
that they had something that showed promise and they needed
(43:03):
a boost, and wedged in between those two miraculous and
giant accomplishments. Evelyn, along with her friend Alexandra Penny, who's
still living and very vibrant and who I had many
fun conversations with. The two of them were friends and
(43:25):
were trying to find something to increase breast cancer awareness,
of which there was very little then there's much more now.
They came up with They actually had learned about a
woman in California who was making and passing out peach
color dribbons for awareness. So they contacted her and said, hey,
(43:48):
let's do this together. You know, Water had twenty five
hundred beauty counters around the world. Alexandra with Self magazine
had two million readers. We can really gets this ball rolling.
And the California woman said no and hung up on them.
So they were She said, you're just going to be
(44:09):
uh uh, advertise it, make money from it, and I
don't want that. And they were confused by this. So
lawyers said, well, that's just one color. Come up with
the different colors, and so they did and came up
with the ubiquitous pink ribbon. It's everywhere, especially this month.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah. Yeah, but as you said that.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
It's it's it's important to remember that breast cancer is
ever green. You know, two of my two of my
radical sisters were diagnosed in November Roses and diagnosed in June.
I was diagnosed in April. October is a wonderful reminder.
But breast cancer is every month. So that makes this
(45:00):
book pretty evergreen as well.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yes, that's what. You took the words right out of
my mouth, because I was going to say that, you know,
breast cancer awareness, just like I believe all timers awareness
is not just on a month that it's their awareness month.
Every month we should be aware. We need to take
(45:25):
care of our bodies and questions and you know, go
for another opinion. You know, if you don't have peace
of mind, go for two or three opinions, even until
you had a peace of mind. It would have been
really something that these three women would have connected with
(45:47):
each other, but they didn't. What a force that would
have been that those three together.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I always sprints up photographs of whoever I'm writing about
so that I can look at them every day and say, Okay,
where are we going to go today? And I very
often felt as though they were in the room with
me and in conversation with me. They certainly would have
(46:17):
been aware of one another. There's no doubt about that.
But just it's sort of like legos, you know, they
just built one on top of the other, and certainly
they their shoulders are the shoulders on which today's breast
cancer movement still continuing rest.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yes, that and that's what happens. You know, you had
the pioneers, and then the other people learned from the
original pioneers, and it builds up. And I'm glad that
there is such a huge breast cancer awareness. I'm glad
(46:59):
that now Alzheimer's caregivers are being more vocal. There's much
more available now. And why is that? Because people spoke up.
It took a long time, very long time. I've been
at this. I went in my car eight years ago
and people just did not want to speak up about
(47:20):
their journeys. We need to speak up about our journeys. Judy,
what do you hope your book would accomplish? And what
did you envision as your primary audience for this book,
because I think it's for everybody.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Well, so I think two things in terms of what
I'd like to accomplish. First of all, that readers consider
these three women, two who were famous and wealthy and
one who is just a regular gal like me doing
(47:57):
what they did, you know, taking their second act to
the limits to make things better for the people who
came behind them. And the other important thing to remember
is that doing something you don't first of all, you
don't have to go large. You can do small second
acts and still have makes an impact in others' lives.
(48:19):
But my very favorite quote that I repeat often from
the cultural anthropologist Margaret Meade is never doubt that a
small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
it's the only thing that ever has. You don't have
to be famous, you don't have to have a lot
of money. You just have to, as you said at
(48:41):
the outset, speak up, just ask questions, advocate for yourself,
advocate for others, advocate for those who are yet to come.
But speak up.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yes, that's so important, Jullie. What's the next in the
horizon for you? You are such a talented writer and historians, well,
do you have a sneak cheek?
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I'm leaving the world, which is kind of hard to do,
and I'm writing about an amazing woman whose work, whose
major work occurred during the nineteen fifties, which is sort
of a forgotten decade for women. You know, there were
the Rosie derivators in the forties, and there were the
(49:31):
Women's Livers and Marchers in the sixties, but the fifties
is a really interesting decade. And I'm really excited about
writing this book. I'm keeping her name under wraps until
the contract is signed, but I'm already well into the
research and I'm super excited about it.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Oh wow'll do you all have to come back with
that book, That's for sure. It's always the joy talking
to you. Judy work and people find you find your book.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So my website is Judith L. Pearson dot com and
that's t E A R.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
S O N.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
On Instagram. I'm Judas P. Wright and I want to
remind oh, and the book is available everywhere books are sold,
so whether online, in independent bookstores, brick and mortars. I
love book clubs. Invite me to your book club. I
don't even have to come, we can zoom. It'll be
big fun. And I also want to remind people that
(50:36):
if you on every one of my books pages on
my website, if you scroll down, there's a button that
says got the book. Get an autograph, and if you
click that and fill out a little form, it'll notify
me and I'll sign a book plate. It's he's a
book plate that you can put on the inside of
(50:56):
your books. I can't guarantee you'll increase the value, at
least if it has your name, it'll you know, you'll
know whose book it is. But yeah, it makes it
great fun for regular mails. It makes it great fun
for gifts buying. Anytime of year, you get an autograph.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Uh. Yes, Well, Judy, I can't thank you enough for
writing this book. And book clubs, if you're out there
support groups, breast cancer support groups, buy this book and
buy Judy on a zoom meeting and discuss this book.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
And we didn't even like I feel like I just
barely touched the surface because there were so much of us,
these three women. I'd be here for hours today, folks. Uh, So,
go on Judy's website, which will be in the blog
that Genny Waite's the station manager, rights and produces the show.
But buy this book. Buy it for young women so
(52:02):
that they know the history of these three radical sisters,
of these three wonderful, amazing, aspiring women. I encourage everyone
to buy this book, read it, share it, and let's
have open communication. If you want to be an advocate
(52:22):
of whatever clothes you choose, read this book. I guarantee you,
after you read this book, you're going to want to
be an advocate for whatever clothes you want to be
an advocate for. And it will teach you to speak up.
You're welcome to question a doctor. They may not like
to be questioned. But you know what, that's too bad.
(52:43):
You're the customer, they are providing the service. You have
a right right, you have a right to speak up.
I remember when I went for I think I might
have been my first Um, I may have Graham and
that had to be And yeah, it was in the
eighties and I went in and I he goes. The
(53:05):
guy was very rude, the doctor, and he said, what
are you here for? And I said, because my breast
are lumpy, goes, you have lumps all over And I said, well,
so I want to get checked. That's why I want
to get checked. You know, I was in my mid
twenties and I do have you know, you know, some
(53:27):
women just have cistic breasts and I want to get checked.
But with his attitude, I could see why women would
not want to come back because he made you feel like,
what are you doing there? So yeah, that is so
(53:48):
you know what, folks, just speak up, speak up for
your family, speak up for yourself. And that's why I
had a show. I had this show because I want
to help people. I want to provide you with resources
that I did not have, that were not available or
that just got created. And Judy Pearson, she's a wonderful resource.
(54:12):
Her books are wonderful resources, and I'm telling you you
will be inspired and motivated. I'm inspired and motivated just
talking to you, Judy, So thank you for writing your book.
You're welcome. Thank you for friding your book, doing this research.
You're welcome. You're welcome. My pleasure. And I want to
(54:34):
thank Lilia Coldwell. See all the pressure Old Talk radio
network makes this all possible. I want to thank you
the listeners, Thank you for listening. Subscribing if you don't
have Ray, subscribe it is for free and Spotify Spreaker.
iHeart Amazon Music. You could program Alexia to chatting with Betsy.
(54:55):
And I want people to know about this wonderful book.
Please share the show. If you know someone who has
bread cancer, had breast cancer. Even if they don't. This
book needs to be read. It really does. And I
just can't say that enough. And if I found redundant,
(55:16):
so be it. That's how as soon as I am
about this book? Is it already bestseller? Judy? Is this
already bestseller?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
It's not yet, but I sure hope it gets fair.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
It will be, it will be. I'm surprised it's not already.
But it was just released this month, wasn't it? Or
it was the last month. Time goes by so fast.
Last month, time goes by so fast. So help Judy
make this the bestseller, folks, and invite her to your
book clubs. You will not be sorry. As a matter
(55:51):
of fact, you will be very glad that you didn't.
Judy's a great speaker. Go look her up on her website,
which will be in Le Blanc. And as I always
say on my show, you could follow me on Facebook.
Betsy E. Worzel w or Z E l And in
a world would you can be anything? Please be kind
(56:13):
and shine your life right because we need it now
more than ever before. This is Betsy Worzel, your hosts
of Chatting with Betsy and Patrick Oul Talk Radio Network
a subsidiary of Global Media Network LLC. Bye bye, Now
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Are you still there?
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