Usage Rights: All content is available for editorial use with attribution to El Camino Health
As a psychiatrist, Katherine Taylor, MD, MSc, has always helped guide her patients through life’s challenges, including the range of emotions and anxieties that often accompany a devastating health diagnosis. But her own breast cancer diagnosis gave her a deeper understanding of the mental health struggles of treatment and survivorship that are impossible to truly understand without experiencing them.
“For me, the most difficult part was recognizing that I have a diagnosis that I needed treatment for, knowing about what’s going on on the biological level, but not having any control over it. Usually as a provider, I know the statistics and I can tell my patient that it’s okay to be uncertain. But being the recipient of that information is really hard,” said Dr. Taylor, Chief Medical Director of Mental Health & Addiction Services at El Camino Health. “I was trying to get through work every day while undergoing radiation treatments and I struggled with acknowledging that I didn’t feel well and allowing myself to ask for help without feeling like it was a sign of weakness.”
10 years after her diagnosis and treatment at El Camino Health, Dr. Taylor is cancer free, but still lives with the fear that her cancer could return, something she hears often from others who have been through cancer treatment.
“Every six months I’m faced with having to do another scan, seeing the doctor and waiting for results, and in the weeks before the appointment, I would catch myself starting to get anxious, starting to worry that it wouldn’t go well,” Dr. Taylor said. “Really recognizing where those feelings were coming from and realizing that there’s an overlay of other emotions that are coming up from 10 years ago is really humbling.”
Dr. Taylor also recognizes that each cancer patient and survivor’s experiences are unique, and that listening to their specific concerns is critical to helping them navigate their cancer journey.
“There is no one typical response to cancer, nor to treatment, nor to surviving it. So the best thing for me to do is to ask probing questions and try to make my office an accepting place where they feel comfortable talking about their experience,” Dr. Taylor said. “If I can help a patient to understand what their personal goals are, what their resources are, what their strengths are, that equips me to better provide hope and direction to say, ‘You can get to that place. Let’s figure out where it is you want to be, and let’s figure out what it looks like for you to get there.’”
Dr. Taylor emphasizes that no one has to face this road alone, and encourages anyone struggling to process or cope with a health diagnosis, past or present, to seek the help they need to feel supported.
