Nan Bateman – Breast Cancer Success Story

Radiation treatment for breast cancer in just one week

Two weeks later, those words came back to haunt her when her mammogramresults proved abnormal.“One of us is going to end up with cancer before you know it,” Nanette “Nan” Bateman, 57, warned her husband one afternoon last spring. In her job reviewing cancer patient cases for a health insurance provider, the former nurse had encountered enough clinical information to give her a realistic perspective. “We have to know cancer is part of our future, and we have to be able to deal with it,” she said.

The team behind the cancer care

A second mammogram and biopsy followed, showing that Bateman had stage 1A breast cancer. At the Methodist Richardson Cancer Center, she was welcomed by a team of specialists, including breast surgeon Jenevieve Hughes, MD, FACS, independently practicing physician on the medical staff at Methodist Richardson Medical Center.

“Dr. Hughes introduced me to the whole team up front and let me ask any questions I had,” Bateman says. Among those she met were her medical oncologist Sam Bibawi, MD, and radiation oncologist Paul DeRose, MD, also independently practicing physicians on the hospital’s medical staff.

The first stage of Bateman’s care was a lumpectomy, performed by Dr. Hughes, during which a few lymph nodes were removed from under her arm for a biopsy. The biopsy’s negative results meant that Bateman qualified for an advanced form of radiation therapy called accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI).

Only five days of cancer treatment

“The No. 1 benefit of APBI is that it has a much shorter treatment time — only 1 week compared to 6.5 weeks with whole breast radiation — but has the same clinical outcome as far as recurrence and survival rates go,” Dr. Hughes says. “The second benefit is that the targeted treatment results in less radiation exposure to the remainder of the breast and to the lungs, heart, and other organs.

“Last, treatment can start much sooner. Nan had surgery on June 8 and completed radiation therapy June 29. With whole breast radiation, we wouldn’t have been able to start till mid-July.”

For APBI, a MammoSite® multilumen catheter allows radiation to be delivered directly to the tumor site. It requires two 10-minute treatments a day for five days.

“The treatments were painless,” Bateman says. “Plus, the Cancer Center team adapted to my work schedule, staying late to get in my end-of-day treatments.”

Since her treatment, Bateman has regained her energy and is enjoying cheering on Baylor basketball, gardening, and spending time with her two grown children.

“I knew in the beginning that whatever news it was, there was something the Methodist Richardson Cancer Center could do about it,” Bateman says. “They took care of the cancer and did so much more — they cared for me.”

Learn more about the Methodist Richardson Cancer Center.

Medical results vary from patient to patient, and one person’s results do not necessarily reflect the length of time for treatment or guarantee results for any other patient.