When a Breast Cancer Surgeon Gets Breast Cancer!

Eventually, every doctor becomes a patient one day. For many physicians, experiencing a serious illness and its treatment is humbling, eye-opening and ultimately transformative.

An unexpected shock: a surgeon’s hardest day in the operating room

Dr. Anne Peled: I had opened my private practice just 2 years earlier when I felt a lump in my breast. I really thought it would simply be a cyst or something benign. I had no family history of breast cancer. I was healthy, competing in triathlons and eating very well. The pathologist called the day after my biopsy: it was invasive breast cancer.

It was a complete shock. When I received the news, I was about to scrub in for a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction for another breast cancer patient. I completed that operation that day, then quickly had all the imaging I needed and learned that I did not need chemotherapy. Because it was my own field, I was fortunate in terms of access to resources, but there was something I had not expected: when you receive a diagnosis within your own specialty, it really overwhelms you because you know so much.

The mastectomy dilemma: a friend’s warning

Many women diagnosed at 37, as I was, undergo bilateral mastectomy. But I could not do that. I was very worried about failure to heal, complications and, most of all, loss of sensation . One of my closest friends had undergone a mastectomy and had told me: "I put on my sports bra, but I cannot even tell that I am wearing it."

That is why preserving sensation was a major factor in my decision to have a lumpectomy (removal of the tumor). However, I also wanted a "good" lumpectomy that could be combined with reconstruction (repair). In the end, I had both procedures performed by a team I had trained with.

As a patient, I was amazed at how difficult it was to make decisions and work through all the different components of treatment. I knew everything a person could know about breast cancer and reconstructive surgery, and it was still so hard to figure out what to do.

A new technique is born: an idea over dinner

Dr. Ziv M. Peled (Anne’s husband): The diagnosis was incredibly devastating. You look at the person you love and think: What comes next? What will happen to her career? On the other hand, Anne is so good at "making lemonade out of lemons" that the conversation quickly became a question of "How can we turn this into something that helps other people?" We started talking about the numbness women experience after mastectomy.

Anne Peled: That is how we developed the technique we call "Sensation-Preserving Mastectomy" . Typically, when performing a mastectomy, the nerves extending directly into the breast tissue must be cut to safely remove all of that tissue. Cutting these nerves causes not only numbness but also chronic pain.

We thought about it this way: we can repair nerves elsewhere in the body using decellularized "nerve grafts" obtained from cadavers. These act as a bridge through which your own nerve can grow over time. We had seen how well this method worked in the extremities (arms and legs). We decided to try it; I had my lumpectomy in January 2018, and we performed our first case using this new technique at the end of February. In the article we published in July 2019, we showed that 87% of the 16 patients we treated retained sensation. It is not perfect, but most people regain much of their sensation. Since then, we have performed at least 1000 procedures.

Sensation is not a luxury

Ziv M. Peled: Sensation is not simply a luxury or a matter of sexuality. Hot oil could splash onto your chest while you are cooking; you could sustain a third-degree burn without feeling it. Then you might look down and see your implant exposed, damage that would take several operations to repair. You could develop serious sunburn because you do not feel the need for sunscreen. Or you could feel deeply embarrassed at the gym after failing to notice that your breast had slipped out of your clothing. We only understand how important sensation really is once we lose it.

On the wrong side of the statistics: a second cancer seven and a half years later

Anne Peled: Everything was wonderful for 7.5 years after the lumpectomy. I was living my life exactly as I wanted in every respect. Then, in May 2025, I had a mammogram. They called me back because of calcifications. The unbelievable part was that this was not even a recurrence of my old cancer. It was a different cancer that had developed on the same side.

I was heading for another similar operation. I was completely unprepared for this news. With so few women diagnosed with breast cancer under 40, this had happened to me despite doing everything "right". My chance of developing a new cancer was less than 7%. Being on the wrong side of the numbers again and again makes you wonder, "How is this possible?" over and over.

I knew immediately that I needed a mastectomy. There was no other option now. I wanted the operation performed in exactly the way Ziv and I do it. Fortunately, it was at a stage that did not require chemotherapy. When my plastic surgeon suggested that Ziv perform the nerve repair (reconstruction), my first thought was that this would be too much for him. But believing that no one knew this operation better than we did, I decided to ask Ziv. He said "yes" without any hesitation.

"Moving from the doctors’ parking lot to the patients’ parking lot"

Anne Peled: Being a patient is really, really hard. One of the worst moments was the day I went to the hospital for radiotherapy after my first diagnosis. I parked in the patients’ parking lot, even though I had been parking in the doctors’ parking lot since I was 21. I went into that appointment sobbing. Waiting is really hard.

We tell everyone that recovery is a process, and I have told my patients this many times, but it really is. It takes a lot of work. I need to follow sensory rehabilitation protocols. My chest feels tight, and there are implants I have to get used to. I was a little surprised by how much patience it takes to truly accept the changes. You just have to let time pass, and that was harder than I had expected.

I have been very open about this journey, so my patients who had mastectomies 4-6 months before I did came up to me and said, "I managed this today; it will be your turn soon." One patient brought me a hair salon voucher so I could have my hair washed, knowing that I would not be able to raise my arms after surgery. They sent me their favorite bras and reading lists. The best part of experiencing cancer twice has been building this tremendous community of people who stand in your corner.