By Catherine Kolonko

Hearing the news that a loved one has cancer is devastating enough but learning on the same day that you have it too seems too painful and frightening to imagine. That’s what happened to a local mother and daughter whose parallel battles with breast cancer began while one was accompanying the other on a visit for a biopsy.

That was the day the mother and daughter were both diagnosed with breast cancer. “It’s not the phone call you want to make to your father and husband,” reflected Patti Hopkins, 45, about that fateful day she went with her mother to have a biopsy done on a suspicious lump in her mother’s breast.

Patti had noticed an indentation on her breast that her boyfriend described as a dimple and had asked her regular doctor about the change but he dismissed it as something muscular, she said. “The other fearful thing is it did not show on a mammogram,” said Patti. The mammogram done in April of last year failed to detect the cancer discovered with an ultra sound just a few months later, she said.

Patti didn’t know it at the time but dimpling or indentations of the breast can be a sign of breast cancer, she said. While accompanying her mother for a breast biopsy, she showed it to her mother’s doctor. “She took one look at it and sent me downstairs for an ultrasound.”
Patti and her mother Sue Hopkins, 71, learned on the same day that they each had breast cancer. Later they underwent surgery on the same day at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla. Since both required surgery and their doctor was available they scheduled it for the same day. “She did me and then she did my mom,” Patti said.

Patti underwent a lumpectomy and followed it with six months of chemotherapy and radiation, which was recommended because of her age and being premenopausal, she said. Her mother elected to have a mastectomy.

“My attitude about it was I’m a super busy person,” Patti said about how she coped with the diagnosis and treatment. “I realized I would have about five down days (with each treatment cycle) and I told everybody to leave me alone because I don’t like bothering people.”

One of the tougher side effects of Patti’s chemotherapy treatment was dealing with immediate menopause, she said. Her whole body seemed to change, making it more difficult to lose weight. “It’s over night. It was pretty shocking,” she said. Despite those difficulties, the cancer battle changed her outlook on how she lives her life. Now it doesn’t matter so much whether she has a closet full of clothes that she may be able to fit again someday, she said.

“It’s life altering,” Patti said. “It’s changed my life as far as what matters. I kind of don’t sweat the small stuff anymore.”

A recovering alcoholic, Patti said that getting sober before discovering the cancer absolutely helped her to cope with learning she had a disease that could be fatal.

Recent medical checkups look good for both women and so far there is no sign that cancer has returned or spread. Patti is awaiting the results of genetic testing to determine whether she carries a breast cancer gene. The answer is important not only because she has a 20-year-old daughter but also because if she has the gene, the chance of her cancer returning is higher. Thus her future prevention treatment would likely be more aggressive and include the possible removal of her ovaries, she said.

Sue found out only after her treatment was over that she wasn’t the only member of her family to battle the disease. “It turns out that two of my cousins had breast cancer and we didn’t even know it,” she said.

The women agree sharing their very similar battles with cancer added another level to an already close relationship they shared as mother and daughter.

“We’ve become really, really close,” Sue said. “That’s a special thing that comes out of it. It’s a wakeup call.”

“Things are just more serene and peaceful,” Patti said. “We have a much more loving relationship than we had before.”