Mother and daughter, diagnosed with breast cancer five days apart, ring the bell at Hoag

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Jeannette Reding was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer on Valentine's Day earlier this year.
Hoag Hospital gave the same news to her daughter, Kristina Walters, five days later.
The mother and daughter have always been close. They live in the same neighborhood in Orange.
Now, they're both breast cancer survivors, and this experience over the last few months may have brought them together that much more.
'It's almost like it's been easier for my dad [Tony] and my husband [Mike],' said Kristina Walters, 43. 'My dad is a big worrier, but it was almost more calm. It was kind of a blessing in disguise, which is weird. You're not alone. You do feel alone, but you're really not.
'It wasn't like, 'Oh my God, poor us.' It was more like, 'Thank God we have each other.' Kind of crazy.'
Walters finished her cancer treatments a couple of weeks ago. On Thursday, the family gathered as her mother also rang the bell signifying the completion of cancer treatment at the Hoag Family Cancer Institute in Newport Beach.
Reding, 66, called it 'surreal' that her daughter was also diagnosed with cancer.
'I couldn't believe it,' she said. 'Here I am, and I have cancer, and she's invading my moment.'
Both mother and daughter have gone in for mammograms each year, and catching the cancer early helped their chances. Walters had her breast cancer just on her right side — ductal carcinoma — while Reding had both ductal and lobular carcinoma. Each went through radiation, though they avoided chemotherapy.
Reding said her older sister, Pat, who is also a breast cancer survivor and had a mastectomy, didn't go in to get checked out until she found a lump. Pat gave advice to both mother and daughter — and their experience highlights why early detection is important.
'Don't wait, just do it,' Walters said of her mammogram advice to other women. 'It's not a big deal, just get it done. That one year of waiting could change a lot of things. The technology nowadays is pretty incredible.'
Dr. Elizabeth Kraft, a breast and oncoplastic surgeon at Hoag who treated both mother and daughter, said this is the first time in her decade in the field that she's seen two generations have breast cancer concurrently. Both had small enough tumors that they were eligible for oncoplastic surgery, which not only removes the tumor but allows for better cosmetic results for the breast.
Walters underwent her oncoplastic surgery two weeks before Reding underwent a double lumpectomy with breast reconstruction. Both were performed by Kraft with help from Hoag plastic surgeons Nirav Savalia and Raquel Minasian, respectively.
Kraft said her mentor, Dr. Mel Silverstein, was an innovator in oncoplastic surgery in the 1990s. He was recruited to Hoag in 2008 and started training other surgeons in a fellowship that was developed between USC and Hoag that Kraft herself went through before the partnership ended.
Oncoplastic surgery is only offered in a couple of locations throughout the country, Kraft said, and the people teaching it came from the Hoag fellowship.
'I describe it to a patient like if you have a pizza,' Kraft said. 'If the whole pizza has a disease, you can't do much with that to make it a circle. But if we only have one slice of pizza we have to take out, we can really put the pizza back together in a nice way so that you're still the same shape and size.
'They're able to wear swimsuits again. They're able to wear the same bras. That stuff makes a difference, every day getting dressed. It was really amazing that we could offer them this. It's another positive outcome from this.'
It adds up to a newsworthy story, something Mike Walters would know well. He's the co-founder and former news director at TMZ.
The Walters' children — Tyler is 14 and Ava is 12 — were also able to attend Thursday's cancer bell ringing. Kristina said she will make sure that Ava goes through the proper screenings as she gets older.
Kristina was emotional even before her mother rang the bell.
'Finally, it's over for her,' she said. 'It was hard watching her, because she was a lot more sore, and the burns and everything were harder for her. I was more happy for her, that she's done. She's not a complainer, but she's been in a lot of pain.'
Reding certainly seemed to have a good sense of humor after ringing the bell. She had an area that didn't heal as well, which required medicated gauze each night.
She said the smell was tough to bear for her husband, Tony.
'I lost my sense of smell during COVID, so it didn't bother me,' Reding said.