Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: An Amazing Woman

The first time I represented Americans United it was as part of a panel on taxpayer funded school vouchers that included then-Florida State Legislator Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She was impressive then, and she continues to be today. She is a strong feminist, supports separation of church and state, and is a great mentor. One thing I love about her is that when she is getting ready to run for a new office, she finds a woman to replace her in the seat she is vacating. She keeps women in the pipeline.

She is not one to back down from a fight, so it comes as no surprise to me that she would deal with a personal health challenge with the same intensity. For the past year Wasserman Schultz has battled breast cancer. On Monday she will introduce legislation that calls for a national education campaign targeting women between 15 and 39.

When Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz steps to the lectern at the Capitol on Monday to push for greater awareness of breast cancer risks in younger women, she'll be speaking from experience.

The Broward County Democrat and mother of three told The Miami Herald on Saturday that she successfully battled breast cancer for the past year and is going public with her story in the hope of alerting young women to its prevalence. She'll introduce legislation Monday that calls for a national education campaign targeting women between 15 and 39.

'I wanted to be able to not just stand up and say, `I'm a breast cancer survivor.' . . . I wanted to find a gap and try to fill it,'' said Wasserman Schultz, 42.

In the past year, she underwent seven major surgeries, including a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, while balancing motherhood, Congress and her roles as a chief fundraiser for House Democrats and a political surrogate, first for Hillary Clinton and then for Barack Obama.

"I had a lot going on last year," she said with a laugh, sitting in the living room of the Capitol Hill town house she shares with two other members of Congress when she's in Washington. "I'm a very focused, methodical person, and I wasn't going to let this beat me. I wasn't going to let it interfere with my life."

And she didn't. She was very visible in the 2008 presidential campaign, and hearing this makes her involvement even more impressive.

Breast cancer in younger women can be particularly aggressive, but it can be more difficult to detect because of breast density. And physicians, Wasserman Schultz said, can be slow to recognize the threat to younger women.

"Young women go skipping along through their life, thinking they're invincible, not worrying about breast cancer because they think of it as an older woman's disease," Wasserman Schultz said, noting that the focus is often on a woman's first mammogram, typically at 40.

The death rate from breast cancer has declined for older women, but remains stable for younger women because they are often diagnosed at a later stage, she said.

"It just pains me to know that younger women, because they don't know and because they're blown off by physicians many times, and because they squeeze their eyes shut and hope that it's nothing, that their death rate is much higher," she said. [...]


Wasserman Schultz discovered a breast lump through a self-exam, two months after her first mammogram at 40. Although the cancer was detected at an early stage, she also learned that as an Ashkenazi Jew of Eastern European descent, she was at greater risk of carrying a gene mutation that makes Ashkenazi Jews predisposed to breast cancer and recurrance. She tested positive for this BRCA2 gene mutation, prompting her to have both breasts removed.

She was also at higher risk of ovarian cancer and had her ovaries removed -- the day after Election Day. Her final surgery was in December.

Because the cancer was caught so early, she didn't need chemotherapy or radiation but will take the cancer drug tamoxifen for five years.

She said she decided to keep her cancer private, concerned mostly that her young children (then 8-year-old twins and a 4-year-old daughter) would worry, particularly with a mother who was also constantly on the go. They knew she was undergoing surgery, but she didn't tell them the cause.

'I knew from my doctors that if I went through their recommended course of treatment that I would get through it and I'd be fine, that I could come out the other side and confidently tell my children, `Mommy's fine,' '' she said.

She scheduled her treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., during congressional recesses so she wouldn't miss votes in Congress.

I told you she is tough!

I'm so glad her cancer was diagnosed and treated early -- we NEED Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Congress. The work she does there benefits us all.