Breast cancer diagnosis used to help others

TAMPA, Fla. – AdventHealth Carollwood’s Chief Nursing Officer Jill Mendez is using her experience to help encourage and educate her staff to get their yearly mammograms, something that likely saved her life. 

The backstory:

When you or someone you know and love is diagnosed with cancer, it can be a blur. 

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“So many things go through your mind, your world falls apart,” Jill Mendez explained. 

When she went in for her routine mammogram last year, she thought nothing of it. 

She said, “I have a big family, lots of cousins, second, third generations, and no one in my family has breast cancer.”

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Then came the diagnosis and the thoughts running through her mind. 

“I remember my husband getting here and my doctors telling us talking about chemo, port placement and oncology visits,” Mendez responded. “After any diagnosis, after any kind of illness, your world, your focus, your lens becomes very small.”

Dig deeper:

She quickly started receiving treatment at the same hospital she works for, meaning her colleagues became part of her village. 

“They became my caregivers, my prayer warriors, my up-lifters,” Mendez explained. “They were just phenomenal through it all.”

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A village she needed at a low time in her life. For the first time, she was the one getting cared for instead of being the provider. 

“Being a woman in general, we are the providers for our family, flu shots for spouses, we take care of our aging parents, take care of our children getting their doctor visits in,” she said. “As a woman and healthcare provider, that was challenging.”

Why you should care:

She now uses her job as a platform to make sure other women get their regular mammograms and checkups. 

“My cancer was caught at stage one because of early detection,” she responded. “A routine mammogram caught it before it reached my lymph nodes.”

Her type of cancer was caught early, and she says she would have a different outcome if it wasn’t. 

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She explained, “the type of cancer I have was so aggressive, it would have been stage four in a matter of a few months.” 

What’s next:

As she moves forward with a renewed purpose in life, she knows she’s lucky and is happy she can help other women. 

“Being a Chief Nursing Officer allows me a wider platform to reach more people and really encourage early detection,” Mendez said. 

She said AdventHealth’s focus on the body, mind and spirit really helped her get through her diagnosis and treatment. They focus on the whole person, instead of just the disease. 

The Source: FOX 13 gathered this information from an interview with AdventHealth Carrollwood’s Chief Nursing Officer who went through a breast cancer diagnosis.

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