Lillie Shockney coordinates the patient education and outreach programs for the breast center at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. A breast cancer survivor herself, she works closely with new patients and coordinates the efforts of breast cancer survivor volunteers.

How do you change people's attitudes toward breast cancer?

What happens to the majority of women when they are diagnosed with breast cancer is the normal reaction of feeling shocked, but also believing that this is a death sentence. One of my responsibilities is to have them not see this as the end of the road, but merely a bump in the road, and help them to see that their glass is half full, not half empty. Eighty-five percent of women diagnosed today with breast cancer will become long-term survivors, and that's good news.

What do you call this whole process?

We've developed a program that I have to really credit my husband for, called Waking Up Transformed. Rather than a patient viewing her mastectomy or lumpectomy surgery as losing part or all of her breast, we want her to view it as having had transformative surgery. The surgeon's mission is to transform her from a victim into a survivor, so she's exchanging her breast for another chance at life, and that's a very fair trade.

Are you saying it's a positive thing to have to go through this process?

If a woman plays her cards right and looks at the diagnosis of breast cancer as an opportunity rather than as a strictly negative experience after the treatment is completed, she may look back on this as I do and say "this really was a good thing." I don't mean to say that I was glad that I got breast cancer or that a patient is glad that this has happened to her, but instead I mean taking the opportunity to see what can come from it that can be positive: Re-assessing our values, how we spend our time, asking whether there are things that we wished that we had told family members ... You realize that life is very precious, and for many of us, life can be very short. So I mean stepping back and saying "what can I learn from having had this disease, what has this disease taught me about myself and about how I want to spend the rest of my life, what mark do I want to leave in this world?"

Are you saying that you wouldn't have had it any other way?

I've been asked many times, "if you could rewind the videotape of your life and erase the fact that you had breast cancer, would you?" And in each case I've said, "absolutely not." I would not erase this at all. It has resulted in me really being directed as to where I think I belong in this particular job, and I know myself better than I ever did before. I know my husband better, than I ever thought I could know him. My marriage is stronger. I value each day. I don't take each day for granted and I definitely did before. So I would not erase this, no.

That's a unique reaction, though, isn't it?

I think it's true that most women would say, "Is there an easier way for me to learn these lessons?" but in spending a lot of time with breast cancer survivors — whether they're newly diagnosed or long term survivors — I certainly do find that more and more of them are taking a more positive attitude in looking at this disease.