Beyond the Pink: Navigating Life, Health, and Breast Cancer with Medical Oncologist Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky

Breast cancer is one of those diagnoses that almost every woman thinks about at some point. Maybe you’ve had a mammogram callback, maybe you found a lump, maybe your mother, sister, best friend, coworker, or you have been diagnosed. Or maybe you’ve wondered, what can I actually do to lower my risk? But here’s the thing - most of what women hear about breast cancer focuses on finding it and treating it, we hear much less about everything that comes before and after, and the after can be enormous.  What happens to your fertility if you’re diagnosed before you’ve finished building your family? What happens when chemotherapy or hormone therapy puts you into a state of menopause a decade before you expected it? Can you ever take hormones again? Is pregnancy safe after breast cancer? And after treatment ends, and everyone tells you “you’re cancer free - go live your life”…what does that actually look like? Our guest today has made it her mission to talk about these exact issues.  Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky is a board-certified medical oncologist specializing in breast and gynecologic cancers. She’s the head of the breast and gynecologic medical oncology department at Valley Health System in New Jersey, and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is where Dr. Sekhon and Dr. Robbins met and trained together. Dr. Teplinsky is also the host of Interlude podcast, a passionate women’s health advocate and author of Beyond the Pink: Navigating Life, Health, and Breast Cancer. Breast cancer is so much bigger than wearing a pink ribbon. In this episode, Dr. Lucky Sekhon and Dr. Alicia Robbins sit down with Dr. Teplinsky to discuss what women actually need to know about their risk, prevention, diagnosis, hormones, fertility, and what happens when treatment is done, but you’re still figuring out how to live in your body again.  Breast health isn’t just something that we should start thinking about after there’s a problem. We should be evaluating our own risk, better understanding our family history, knowing what screening we need, and knowing what changes in our body deserve attention, as well as taking care of ourselves in a holistic way outside of just actual breast cancer treatment. For anyone listening who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, or loves someone who has, we hope this conversation makes clear that you’re allowed to care about more than just simply surviving. Follow @drteplinsky to hear more from her and