Breast cancer unsteadied Pam Fisher.
The mass was found early, it was highly treatable, and the pharmaceutical executive was determined to get through cancer the same way she tackled any other challenge: Identify the problem, resolve it, move on.
But when Fisher returned to work in the summer of 2024 after a medical leave of absence, she felt like she had been pushed off an emotional cliff. She doesn't know if it was an existential crisis or the sudden loss of estrogen from the medication shutting down her ovaries, but she felt adrift, overwhelmed, and unsettled-awash in negative thoughts.
Her oncologist, Ramy Sedhom, MD, medical director of Oncology and Palliative Care at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, said something that brought tears to her eyes:
"How are you doing?"
"It was so powerful for him to ask that question," Fisher said. "He was the only person who knew what I had been through."
Sedhom told her about a new Psychosocial Oncology Clinic-a team of specially trained psychotherapists, available at no charge in the most convenient setting for patients. The oncologist recommended Fisher talk with Kara Buda, PhD, a psychologist on the same floor.
Fisher told him she didn't need that. In the environment and culture in which she was raised, "you don't go see a doctor for your mind. You put your head down and figure it out, and work through it."
The second or third time she had uncontrollable tears in Sedhom's office, she remembers him taking a more direct approach: "I'm going to get Dr. Buda. Just talk to her."
