“Doctors and nurses also get sick. It could happen to me… and it did. It was an impacting diagnosis, a triple-negative breast cancer, extremely aggressive, but these are the challenges of life.” So begins the interview given by Isabel Galriça Neto to Cristina Ferreira in the TV show “Dois às 10” (Two at ten), on TVI channel, broadcasted on October 1, where she answered all questions without taboos and talked about the chock of the diagnosis, the way she reacted and faced life and how the support of friends and family has been essential during the treatments at Hospital da Luz Lisboa which lasted for over a year. “As physician and pragmatist, I considered: ‘what do I have to do?’”, she recalls, adding that she always asked to be informed of “everything”. To the question on how she faced the sudden fragility of the disease, the physician answered with the lesson of life learnt from her patients: “I have faced it with pain, obviously. But there was one thing that I had learned with my great masters, the patients, and that was living now first-hand: that we do not choose certain circumstances of life and that disease does not define us. No matter how hard it may be, we simply have to find the best way to deal with it.” “There are times where the pain is so overwhelming, that we cannot manage it, but then there is space to do so. I got to the point of using a wheelchair to go to the hospital, but that did not define me. Nor the hair or the eyebrows, there is much more beyond that. I looked for my essence.” “For me, it only made sense to be treated here, where I know and trust people. They gave me a very special lap, and I am deeply grateful to the several teams of Hospital da Luz Lisboa, where I work for over 20 years”, stated the physician, who is director of the Unit of Continuing and Palliative Care. “There are numerous women like me, and I take this opportunity to extend my embrace to them. In this October, I wish to celebrate the strength of these women and men with disease who surpass themselves and are ‘super-survivors’.” The interview happened symbolically in the first day of October, the month globally dedicated to breast cancer ( Pink October ), and it was preceded of a reportage at Hospital da Luz Lisboa, where Isabel Galriça Neto visited some of the spaces of the Oncology Centre where she was treated. She was also surprised by the testimonies of two professionals that have been crucial during that phase: nurses Graça André and Marisa Falé. “ Isabel Galriça Neto: the physician turned oncologic patient ” – watch the full interview (TVI Player)
