She had spent years as a physical therapist working with cancer patients, including women dealing with lymphedema after breast cancer treatment. Julie Gustafson knew the procedures, the surgeries and the treatment options. So, when a routine mammogram came back abnormal in March 2022, she also knew what might be coming.
Gustafson knew too much about breast cancer to convince herself everything was fine. What she didn't know was how long she would have to wait to find out for sure. It would be about three and a half months before Gustafson underwent the biopsy that confirmed what she already suspected. During those months, she called about appointments, checked on insurance authorization and tried to help move the process along, and she waited.
"The unknown is the worst," Gustafson said.
It is the part of her cancer journey she remembers not simply because of fear, but because of what that fear did to an otherwise rational mind. At one point, she suggested to her husband that perhaps they should get divorced.
"You don't want to be with someone that has cancer," she remembers telling him.
His response was immediate.
"You're talking crazy," he told her. "We're not doing that."
Today, Gustafson can recognize just how far her mind wandered during those months. But that is also why she understands the importance of a program designed around something deceptively simple: getting an answer.
Gustafson is one of the women behind Cancer Warriors, the Las Cruces nonprofit that grew from the cancer experiences of several local women. Its collaboration with Memorial Medical Center, Mammos to Answers, is intended to dramatically shorten the stretch of uncertainty Gustafson endured.
For patients whose mammograms are performed through Memorial and require additional evaluation, Gustafson said Memorial reserves appointment slots for follow-up imaging, biopsies and results, with the goal of getting patients from an abnormal mammogram to an answer within 21 days. That difference is personal.
"I would never want someone to have to go through that," she said of her own wait.
Her perspective comes from both sides of the treatment room. Gustafson, a Las Cruces native has been a physical therapist for 26 years. For more than a decade she worked in outpatient therapy and became a certified lymphedema therapist, treating many cancer patients. She watched women move through breast cancer diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
She thought she understood what they were experiencing. Then she became one of them.
Gustafson remembers encouraging patients who were struggling to get appointments or answers to advocate for themselves. Sometimes, she admits, she wondered whether they were pushing hard enough. Her own diagnosis changed that.
She called repeatedly while waiting for her biopsy. When she was told insurance authorization was holding things up, she called the insurer herself, obtained the authorization information and called back. Then came scheduling complications and the need to coordinate a physician with the facility where the biopsy would be performed.
"No, they were advocating for themselves," Gustafson said she eventually realized.
Her abnormal mammogram came in March. Her cancer diagnosis came in June. The cancer was aggressive and fast-growing, although Gustafson said it was caught early and responded well to treatment. She underwent a bilateral mastectomy in August 2022.
By coincidence, the day Gustafson had surgery was the day her former high school acquaintance Marci Dickerson received her own cancer diagnosis.
Cancer brought the two women back together.
As they compared experiences, one difference stood out. Dickerson, the founder of Cancer Warriors, had connections that helped her move from abnormal mammogram to diagnosis much more quickly. Gustafson, despite working in health care and knowing many local physicians professionally, had waited months.
They began asking a question that would eventually help produce Mammos to Answers. Why should getting an answer depend on who you know?
Cancer Warriors began working with Memorial on a way to shorten that gap. Under Mammos to Answers, Gustafson said Memorial holds spaces in its schedule so patients who have an abnormal mammogram through the hospital system can move through the additional testing and, when necessary, biopsy without becoming lost in the scheduling process. The target is an answer within three weeks.
The program does not make every answer good news. It does something Gustafson learned through experience can matter almost as much: It replaces uncertainty with direction.
"You hear the word cancer," she said, "and I think people automatically think it's a life sentence."
An answer allows the next conversation to begin. Identifying the type of cancer, its stage, and what treatment will look like.
"It just helps knowing that you're moving forward," Gustafson said.
That same experience shaped another part of Cancer Warriors' work. After her diagnosis, Gustafson was surprised by how little general information she received about resources available to cancer patients. She had the advantage of a medical background. Many patients don't.
"If I'm not getting it, if it's not being handed to me, what are these people that don't know anything; how are they getting through this?" she remembers wondering.
Gustafson researched and wrote the resource guide that now goes into Cancer Warriors' diagnosis care kits. The organization also provides kits for patients going through chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. That diagnosis kit remains the most important. It tells someone beginning the journey something she needed to know herself: Other people have been here.
Four years after her diagnosis, Gustafson says she finally feels like herself again. In some ways, she said, survivorship proved more difficult than treatment. Her children left home, treatment ended and suddenly the fight that had structured her life was over.
"Well, now what?" she remembers thinking.
Slowly, the pieces returned. She began exercising consistently again. Life began to feel familiar.
Cancer also changed what Gustafson considers worth worrying about. She uses a word few people would expect from someone describing the disease. Gift.
"I don't think that many people think that cancer is a gift," Gustafson said. "But for me it is."
It forced her to slow down and reconsider what mattered. It gave her greater compassion for the patients she once treated. And through Cancer Warriors, it gave her an opportunity to help change the experience for the next woman who receives an abnormal mammogram.
Gustafson remembers reaching a point during her own wait when even confirmation of cancer seemed preferable to continued uncertainty.
"I know it's cancer," she remembers thinking. "Fine. I'm fine with it being cancer. But can we just start?"
Now, women moving through Mammos to Answers know they don't have to wait three and a half months to start.
