‘Powerful Sisterhood’ of Lawyer Cancer Survivors Tell Their Stories Online
Patricia Kosich looks back fondly on her cancer treatment.
Now a senior counsel for global commercial operations at Amgen, Kosich acknowledges her attitude is unusual. She was a single mom and a third-year associate at Foley & Lardner when she was diagnosed with breast cancer around the time of her 42nd birthday.
“As a single mother with a 90-mile round-trip commute each day to a job with all the billable pressures typical of law firm life, I was exhausted,” she writes in her online “survivor story.” She resisted when her physician recommended she go on disability leave during a treatment that would involve multiple surgeries and six months of chemotherapy and radiation. She felt she had to be strong enough to work through it, and didn’t want to view herself as a failure.
She finally relented, staying home for the entire course of her treatment in what she describes as “the very best decision I have ever made in my life for both my daughter and myself.” She acknowledges that the “incredible” support of her law firm and its generous disability package made it possible.
“When I say that I look fondly back on my experience with cancer, I do so recognizing the personal growth I underwent during the process,” she writes. “It was the first time in my adult life that I wasn’t holding myself to an unachievable standard of self-sufficiency and perfectionism.”
Kosich is one of 11 lawyers whose “breast cancer survivor stories” went live on Monday on the ABA’s website in a project sponsored by the ABA Health Law Section’s Breast Cancer Task Force. Kosich helped spearhead the project, urging other lawyers to submit their stories and helping with the editing. She is vice chair of the section’s Breast Cancer Initiatives Executive Committee.
One lawyer was newly married and a first-year associate when she received her diagnosis. One was unemployed with a new job on the horizon. One was campaigning for the state legislature. One woman wasn’t even a lawyer yet. The diagnosis inspired her to go to law school, and she ended up studying for finals while hospitalized with a serious blood infection.
Shelley Hubner, who chairs the section’s Breast Cancer Initiatives Executive Committee, says the women are part of a “very powerful sisterhood” advocating for victims of breast cancer. “These women are really unsung heroes,” she tells the ABA Journal. “Some of them faced uncanny problems, I mean unbelievable problems, and they tackled them, learned from them, grew from them, helped others because of them.”
The aim of the project, Kosich explains, is to instill hope in other lawyers fighting the disease, and to reduce their fears and isolation. The varied stories show different ways lawyers have managed career, family and treatment, suggesting there is no “right” way to juggle all the demands. While Kosich was happy she opted for time off from work, another lawyer tells of being “bitterly disappointed and even hurt” when a senior partner suggested she go on disability.
The idea for the project was conceived a couple years ago when the task force was discussing how to help lawyers affected by breast cancer. In the past, the task force had focused on training lawyers how to help breast cancer patients, rather than how to deal with the disease themselves.
Task force members recognized that women lawyers with breast cancer experience unique issues because of the extensive hours and pressures of law practice, Hubner says. “The practice of law can be very challenging,” she says. “I think it’s fair to say that as lawyers we’re expected to be strong, we’re not expected to show our weaknesses—clients look to us for that.”
Now task force members hope to expand the project with more stories from survivors and by other lawyers touched by breast cancer of a close friend or family member.
Kosich sees some consistent themes in the stories already online. After diagnosis, the lawyers are struggling with these basic questions: What should I tell my co-workers? Will I get support? How will this affect my job? Will I be marginalized? Should I continue to work?
Kosich was also struck by each woman’s instinct to survive. They didn’t view themselves as victims or patients. Instead they “looked at this as an opportunity to continue their personal growth and really fight and get to the other side of this diagnosis,” Kosich tells the ABA Journal.
Kosich wrote about her own personal growth in her online survivor story: “The balance I insisted on during treatment has lasted post-treatment—but, that wouldn’t have happened had I insisted on my usual approach of stoically overachieving. I am practicing in-house now and have a 4-mile round-trip commute. I walk to work sometimes, and life has never felt better for my daughter and me.”
