Breast Cancer Survivor Faces Congestive Heart Failure, Credits Cardio Oncology Program With Her Survival
2023 was a tough year for Linda Newton. In January, she found out she had breast cancer.
She felt a lump the month before and began to feel some pain.
“I thought it was like an inflammation or something,” said Newton.
A mammogram and biopsy confirmed it was triple-negative breast cancer.
“It's very aggressive,” Newton said.
Newton began chemotherapy treatments at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital in March.
"Going to chemotherapy here at Mansfield was great, because it helped lessen my pain," Newton said. "I'm very thankful for the infusion clinic here."
While Newton was originally against getting chemo, it worked.
She finished her last treatment in August. The next month, doctors removed lingering cancer cells during a single mastectomy.
“At this moment, I'm cancer-free,” said Newton. “I'm thankful for that.”
A huge win for Newton. Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of her fight.
One month later, she felt herself getting sick again. She returned to the hospital and saw Viren Patel, MD, head of Cardio Oncology for OhioHealth.
“She unfortunately had issues with her pumping function,” said Dr. Patel.
Dr. Patel looked at Newton's prescriptions to see if they may be causing her heart problems. According to Dr. Patel, cancer drugs and heart issues have been linked since the 1970s. It was during that time anthracyclines, a particular type of chemotherapy, was proven to impair a patient’s heart pumping function. Over the years, oncologists have started limiting the dosage of anthracyclines to protect vulnerable patients.
"We saw that people were having heart failure or the heart pumping function was going down," Patel said. "They started limiting the dose that you could get in your lifetime. With limiting the dose, the rates of heart issues came down as well."
Dr. Patel says it's hard to know who will develop issues with cancer drugs.
"Everyone's different," Dr. Patel said. "There's some people that will fly through without any issues. Some people will have issues."
Unfortunately for Newton, she was one of them. Dr. Patel diagnosed her with congestive heart failure and adjusted her medication.
"She's gotten better, and she feels much better than she did a year ago," Patel said. "We're still working on trying to get her ejection fraction back to normal, but she's certainly gotten better from where she started off."
Newton credits the Cardio Oncology Program with her improvement.
“I'm doing really well,” she said. “I'm out of the woods of getting a defibrillator or anything like that. It's just going to take along time for it to build back up.”
As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, Newton says she feels grateful she's a survivor. She encourages women to do self-exams and get their yearly mammograms.
"It's everybody's own decision what they want to do," Newton said. "But I do highly suggest self-exams for women because, like I said, this cancer was very aggressive and very painful."
