In this final, special episode of The CARTI Hopecast, host Adam Head sits down with Yara Robertson, M.D., F.A.C.S., Medical Director of Surgery at CARTI and a fellowship-trained breast surgical oncologist whose life changed when she moved from the operating room to the patient chair.

For years, Dr. Robertson dedicated her life to treating breast cancer; working long hours, prioritizing patients above all else, and approaching medicine with precision and control. Then, in 2018, a sudden and unexpected diagnosis of kidney cancer forced her into a role she knew well, but had never fully understood.

From her lived experience, Dr. Robertson shares what it was like to hear the words she had spoken to so many others: “You have cancer.” She reflects on the shock, the loss of control and the cascade of difficult news that followed; from multiple tumors to a genetic mutation that would change how she views her future.

Dr. Robertson offers a rare and powerful perspective of what happens when clinical knowledge collides with lived experience. She speaks candidly about grief, anger, faith and the emotional toll of telling loved ones. Most importantly, she reveals how her experience reshaped the way she cares for patients by slowing down, listening more deeply and recognizing the weight behind every conversation.

Dr. Robertson is an advocate, a listener and what she calls a “hope dealer”, meaning someone who walks alongside patients in their most vulnerable moments while reminding them that their story is not over.

Takeaways:

• A cancer diagnosis reshapes identity, marking a clear “before” and “after” in life.
• Even experienced physicians cannot fully understand the emotional weight of diagnosis until they experience it themselves.
• Patients often do not absorb information immediately after hearing they have cancer. They need time and space to process.
• Empathy in care is deeply human and relational.
• Telling loved ones about a diagnosis can be as difficult as receiving it.
• Survivorship often includes ongoing uncertainty and emotional triggers, not just physical recovery.
• True care extends beyond treatment to include mental, emotional and social support.
• Access to care and health disparities directly impact patient outcomes and survival.
• Identity should not be rooted solely in profession or diagnosis.
• Hope is not optional. It is essential to navigating life after cancer.

Founded in 1976, CARTI delivers leading-edge cancer care in a compassionate, patient-centered environment. Our mission is to make trusted cancer care accessible for every patient we serve through compassion, innovation, and purpose.

The CARTI Hopecast shares authentic, meaningful stories that focus on human experiences. Every day, we see patients and families navigating unimaginable hardships, sometimes feeling alone in their journey. Through The Hopecast, listeners hear stories of resilience and transformation, fostering a sense of connection and hope.

I'm in the middle of doing mastectomy, my hands in the patient's mastectomy site, the phone rings and someone goes, it's a Dr. Master.

And so I said, take it off speaker, bring it to me.

And they put it to my ear.

And I'm literally having to keep it together while I'm operating for him to tell me he found the second cancer.

I get the text, can we talk?

I went in my office, closed the door, sat down, and he goes.

He takes a deep breath.

He goes, the good news is it hadn't spread.

I went, what?

I felt like the wind hadn't been knocked out of me.

I can just remember the sound of the blood pressure cuff.

I can remember everything of that day, but I cannot remember him talking about my diagnosis.

I'm your host, Adam Head, and before we get into today's conversation, I want to do something we don't usually do on this podcast.

If you've listened before, you've noticed we don't spend too much time talking about car tie.

And that's intentional.

And I say that not just as the host of this podcast, but as someone who has the privilege of leading this organization every day.

The heart of the Kartai Hopecast is about people.

Their stories, their experiences, what it means to walk through something difficult and come out the other side changed.

But the truth is, this podcast exists because of Car Ty and because of the people inside of Car Ty who believes that care should transcend treatment.

So today, we're going to walk through the front door a bit.

Not to change what this is about, but to help explain why this is the way it is.

Welcome to the Car Tye HopeCast, where we explore stories that shape us journeys of resilience, hope and perseverance.

We seek the lessons that emerge when we face the unexpected and find strength in the struggle.

At its core, the Hope cast is about something simple, the human experience.

It's about stories of before and after and how the unexpected can impact every dimension of life.

All of these reasons and more, why I'm really excited to have this conversation with someone who lives that out every single day.

Today I'm honored to welcome Dr. Yara Robertson, medical director of surgery at Carti, a fellowship trained breast surgical oncologist and someone whose perspective on care has been shaped not only by years in practice, but by her own experience as a patient.

Dr. Robertson has dedicated her career to treating patients with both precision and compassion, while also working to expand access to care and eliminate disparities in breast health.

But what Makes her story especially powerful and unique is, is that she has also been one who's heard those words, you have cancer.

And I think her perspective shapes not only how she practices medicine, but how she sees people.

Dr. Robertson, thank you for being here.

Welcome to the Hope Cast.

Thank you.

I like being here.

Thank you.

So, Dr. Robertson, you spent your career caring for patients at some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives.

But your perspective shifted in a very personal way when you found yourself on the other side of that experience.

If you would take us back to that moment, what was happening in your life when everything changed for you?

I'll take it back to when, how I was living.

I had been in practice almost eight years.

It was a solo practice.

I mean, well, partnership practice.

I was older, female surgeon.

I worked with kind of old school surgery, meaning surgery came first, life came second.

Your own personal life.

We worked long hours, sometimes saw 70 patients a day in the OR all the time.

We even had a nonprofit and I was vice chairman of that.

So on the weekends I was up at 4 or 5 o' clock in the morning doing vice chairman work for the nonprofit.

My life Encompass was all encompassing with breast cancer.

Breast cancer ran my life.

I got overweight, ate whatever I could eat, much to the detriment of my health, honestly.

And I guess I needed to make a change and God knocked me over the head with it.

I of moved around and every time I took a deep breath, I had an excruciating pain in my left lower back.

I thought, you know, my family has a history of collapsed lungs.

It runs in our family.

So I thought to myself, great, my time to have a collapsed lung.

So, you know, I went to work.

This is crazy.

I had to OR all day be in the or.

And instead of like saying, hey, I need to do such and such, I went and started operating on people.

Yeah, I was like, ah, if I have a collapsed lung, I'll do a pulse ox.

And I saw my sats were good.

I was like, well, it must not be that bad.

So I kept operating, but every time I would take a deep breath, it was this excruciating.

I mean, when patients say 10 out of 10 pain or 15 out of 10 pain, it was 15 out of 10 pain.

Felt like a knife going through my back.

So I got a chest X ray, it was normal and suffered all weekend.

I did Dr. Google and said, I have a kidney stone I'm sure I have a kidney stone.

I need an uncontrasted ct.

So I had my other doctor in my practice write for me to have CT scan.

And the CT scan did not have a kidney stone, but it showed a mass kind of hanging off the kidney.

So the doctor who read it was my friend, and he told me, you know, how do you feel now?

Because I suffered all weekend, and by Monday or Tuesday, I felt better.

I said, I actually feel fine now.

He said, well, it could have been a cyst that ruptured, but you need a, you know, ultrasound.

I felt better, and I will admit doctors make the worst patients.

So I decided I wasn't getting the ultrasound anytime soon because I felt better.

It was a cyst that ruptured, and renal cell was never in my future.

It's not in our family.

You know, I didn't even think about kidney cancer.

And so my sister was on me to get an ultrasound.

Get an ultrasound.

Did you get your.

I stopped answering her calls because I was tired of her asking me I had a dream or.

I actually don't remember if it was a dream or I don't know what it was.

I can't explain it to this day, but in the dream, I am watching tv, and I love red carpet events.

And so the announcer that I watch on Entertainment Tonight, he literally turned around in this dream and said, younger and younger people are getting renal cell.

I woke up alarmed.

Like, what?

Sure.

So, of course, the next day I went and got my ultrasound.

And so I didn't tell the.

This is all in Atlanta.

Of course, I didn't tell the person at the hospital that was doing the ultrasound.

I was a surgeon there.

I took my badge off, made sure I didn't have anything that, you know, designate me as a physician.

And she did the ultrasound on the right kidney, and it was normal.

Then she did the ultrasound on the left kidney, and when she came across this mask, I.

You know, I do breast cancer care.

I do biopsies.

I knew that it was a malignancy immediately.

Immediately.

Just by the look on her face.

It looked ugly.

And I remember saying, go back to that.

She went back to it.

And she knew it wasn't pretty either, but she goes, it could be a cyst.

And I went, lady, that ain't no cyst.

I knew immediately.

So I went to the.

You know, went to the radiologist.

He read it, and his face changed.

His face changed immediately.

His face just changed.

He's like, you're gonna need an mri.

He didn't want to tell me I had cancer.

When I got the mri, I was at the mri, went to work.

The radiologist that was on staff told me, hey, I'll call you once I pull it up.

I'll text you or whatever, like, okay.

So I started getting ready to see a busy clinic.

I mean, we had 65 patients scheduled.

I'm in my office, and I get the text, can we talk?

I went in my office, closed the door, sat down, and he goes.

He takes a deep breath.

He goes, the good news is it hadn't spread.

I went, what?

I felt like the wind hadn't been knocked out of me.

And I don't remember much of the conversation after that, except for he was like, you're going to have to see a kidney specialist.

You're going to have to see a uro oncologist.

I think this is going to be a renal sale.

And then it just started from there.

So I appreciate you describing that, and I've never heard that entire story and how that played out.

But going back, even maybe before this day, before you heard those words, what did your world look like?

You described a little bit of your practice, but just life in general.

And what did you believe about your role as a physician up to that point?

How did you see yourself?

Structured, deliberate, Always in control.

Black or white?

No, gray.

Not very emotional.

When it came to my patients, you know, I could.

Empathetic, sympathetic, but not understanding how really they felt.

Like, I knew that if I gave them a diagnosis of breast cancer, if they had an early stage cancer, they were going to do fine.

You know, I have patience, but, you know, when.

You know, when I mean patience, you know, I'm understanding.

I give them time to kind of take in that they've got breast cancer, but never really understanding how that felt when somebody had those three words.

Yeah, I just.

It was a difference.

I mean, I knew that I was a good doctor.

I am a good doctor, but I don't think I could truly understand how my patient was when they heard that.

And when I heard those words when I saw my uro oncologist.

Like, when you talk to a patient and you start going through their diagnosis, sometimes you can tell they're in shock.

You need to stop.

I've been doing that even before I got diagnosed with breast cancer.

I mean, diagnosed with kidney cancer.

But it was the.

I saw myself on the other side for the.

I call it the other side of the knife or other side of the table.

When my uro oncologist came in there, my kidney specialist came in there and started drawing on the table.

Because I said, there's a chance.

We never did a biopsy, okay, of the mass.

So it could have still been a chance.

My physician side said there's been no pathologic diagnosis of kidney cancer.

So he's going to come in and tell me, okay, this is going to be something non cancerous.

We're going to get it off just to prove it.

And he sat down, pulled his stool up.

My mom was there, she flew into town, had her little notepad to take notes.

And I was like, ma, it's going to be fine.

He's just going to tell me, you're going to get this out and be done by the bing, bada boom, be back at work in two, three weeks.

And he drew a kidney.

And he was like, I'm 99 point sure, 99% sure that you have renal cell.

And I said, are you looking at the right imaging like Yara Robertson, you know, Yara V. Robertson?

And he goes, yep, I saw it and it's going to be a cancer.

He was very understanding.

And I'm going to tell you, I turned right into my patients.

I didn't hear a word that Dr. Master said, nothing.

I even remember being in the waiting room and walking through the waiting room in the clippity clops of the heels, how the snail of the waiting room.

I just remember all of that.

And so when my patients talk about all the height sensitivity, your senses are heightened when you're in a stressful situation.

I can just remember the sound of the blood pressure cuff.

I can remember everything of that day, but I cannot remember him talking about my diagnosis.

In fact, he went through so much stuff that at the end of the hour talk, he said, do you have any questions?

And I had a cruise plan for the end of November, right after Thanksgiving that year.

And I went and I still take my cruise.

And he just looks at me and my mom looks at me and he said, you can take your cruise.

I said, okay.

I didn't say anything else.

And then sometimes you gotta give patients time to process that they've been diagnosed.

You just can't like jump into the rest of the plan.

He had asked me if I wanted to do research, if I wanted to be part of a research study.

And I think I said, apparently I shook my head yes.

So when he walks out before, he just.

I started tearing up because I could hear I had cancer.

And the research lady comes right in after I just get this diagnosis, trying to draw blood.

And I think I yelled Give me a minute.

And of course, she walked right back out.

I mean.

And I don't think I really processed it until we went to the lab, and I was getting all these valves of blood drawn.

And then we went to go ahead and schedule what I thought was the surgery I was gonna have.

And once the lady said, we're gonna do a robotic partial nephrectomy, I broke down.

I broke down hearing that I was going to have to have surgery for cancer.

Just.

It rocked my world.

That's when I finally realized I was going to be a cancerous patient for the rest of my life.

After that initial conversation and heightened sensitivity to everything, everything being amplified, kind of waking up that next morning, it was surreal.

My mom was getting ready to head back to Memphis, and I was putting her in the Uber to go back, and she looked at me, and we both broke down.

You also asked me how my life was before this happened.

And thinking about being a physician.

When I relay messages.

Not relay messages, but relay a diagnosis to a patient.

And then you give more bad news, then you give them more bad news, meaning, yes, you have breast cancer.

We do imaging.

Oh, it's actually spread.

Okay.

Oh, now you need chemo.

Like, the hits keep coming.

That happened to me.

So it went from you have one tumor to repeating the ultrasound, finding out I actually had two tumors, to him calling me.

Honestly, when I was in the middle of an operation, no one really knew I had cancer.

So I'm in the middle of doing mastectomy, my hands in the patient's mastectomy site, the phone rings, and someone goes, it's a Dr. Master.

And so I said, take it off speaker.

Bring it to me.

And they put it to my ear, and I'm literally having to keep it together while I'm operating for him to tell me he found a second cancer.

Oh, my goodness.

And then for him to tell me that I was not gonna get the surgery, I thought I was gonna have to have an open partial nephrectomy, meaning I'm gonna have a big 12.

This big cut on my side.

I'm gonna be out of surgery or out of the operating room for almost eight weeks.

And he felt that I had more tumors on my kidney.

I couldn't react.

Talk about testing every ounce of your skill and training in that particular moment.

When you are.

When you've been raised in general surgery world, you know how to put your emotions in a box.

You got to do what you got to do to get this done, to take care of this patient, especially when you're doing trauma, like the patient might be crashing, dying, it's emotional, but you got to put it in a box so you can get this patient taken care of and you can cry later.

Like, we don't.

You're not crying right there in the trauma room or in the operating room.

General surgery training is so tough.

You say our the way it used to be, the surgeons might be yelling at you.

You don't show emotion.

You just take it and do what you gotta do to get through the case.

That's what we do.

So I was like, I gotta get through this case.

I'm not gonna show any emotion.

I finished this case with no issue.

My first assistant, who only knew I had cancer, she's the only one in the room, she could see my expression.

And then when we got done with the case, she said, I went to the bathroom immediately and I just, I just broke down in the bathroom.

And then when I came back out, my first said, is it more bad news?

I went, yes, it's more bad news.

And then to add to that, I thought after the surgery I would be done with it.

You know, I knew I'd had a lifetime of follow ups and scans and different things like that depending upon what type of cancer it was going to be, because there's multiple types of kidney cancers and I wonder if I was going to need chemo or radiation.

And then for him to tell me, I think you might have a gene mutation which is an abnormality in your DNA that will give you cancer.

And I was like, what?

What else can happen?

What other bad news can I get?

And sure enough, the gene test came back positive where it wasn't over.

Felt like a nightmare.

It's not over.

Meaning even after this comes out and me and you me, for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be looking over my shoulder wondering if another cancer's gonna happen.

It was just devastating.

My whole life changed.

I always tell people cancer's like AC and bc.

Your life is before cancer and then after cancer, it is never the same.

So you've practiced for several years by this point, when you got the news and more news and all the aftermath, did your own response to it surprise you?

Did you surprise yourself having kind of been on the other side of that, so many conversations?

It did.

I was able to see myself and my patients.

Anger, denial, grief.

Because your grief of the life that you lost, like, it's not the same.

I thought I was faith.

I had a Lot of faith before all of this, like.

And you would have thought I was the worst Christian in the world.

I was so mad at God.

So how dare you?

How dare you do this to me?

You know, I. I live my life right?

I've dedicated my life to the calling you gave me.

I just.

I just don't understand how this could have happened.

What did I do to deserve this?

It was all myself blaming myself.

I let myself get overweight.

I ate too much.

I wasn't taking care of myself.

I just victim blame.

I was blamed myself.

Just like I tell my patients not to do.

I was literally my patient talking to me.

So you've said that going through this experience truly has changed the way you relate to your patients.

In what ways did your experience deepen or reshape your empathy?

A couple of things.

I know how it feels to say you have cancer.

And so I give them time to process it.

And instead of just jumping into treatment plans, I make sure that they understand.

They heard me.

And then we start going through what kind of cancer it is, just like my doctor did, which I have always done before, but in a very simplified way.

No matter where their education level.

Don't care if they're a physician talking to me or if it's someone who has never finished sixth grade, but they understand in their knowledge base what kind of cancer.

Because it's so important for them to understand what type of cancer they have so they can make good decisions the same way my doctor did because I knew nothing about renal cell, nothing about kidney cancer.

And then letting them ask questions, even if they're the most basic questions.

And don't let them be embarrassed for answering those.

Asking those questions.

And then just be in a listening ear.

Sometimes when I'm done with the whole spiel about breast cancer, they want to talk about, you know, how do I tell my children?

And I'll get triggered and go back to when I had to tell my brother and sister.

Worst time.

It was the worst thing ever to have tell my siblings.

My mom kept it to herself and wanted me to tell my dad, and then I had to.

I called all my siblings on three way.

My little brother, my big brother, and my little sister.

And my sister's a lieutenant colonel in the military, so she's pretty tough.

But she knew what I'd been going through because she's the one that wanted me to get the ultrasound.

My little brother shows no emotion.

And then my big brother is to be a big burly fireman.

He acts, he.

He's very Dramatic.

So when I told them it was, my big brother didn't take it well at all.

My little brother didn't say much, and my sister just said, I'm proud of you for telling us.

But watch just you, you take your cues from your.

The person who's giving you the.

The news that I have cancer, the family takes the cues from them.

So if you are not in a good space to tell your children or family you have cancer, they're not going to believe you're going to do well.

They don't believe you.

So I had to hold it together to make sure.

I felt like I was going to do well so that they feel like I was going to do well.

Telling your family that you have cancer is one of the worst things you can.

Other than being told you have cancer.

Telling your family you have cancer is just horrible.

Watching their faces, you can see all the emotions that go through their face.

Is she going to be here in a year?

Is she going to lose her hair?

Is she going to need chemo?

Do I need to get checked?

My sister had to go through that.

Do I need to get checked for this?

Finding out it's a gene mutation, it was more devastating almost than find out you had cancer.

And my family was.

Our worlds were rocked by that.

Just being on the other side now just makes me more empathetic to my patients and understanding how they feel.

And also, it's kind of a blessing.

I'll say it's kind of a blessing because when patients are hopeless or they're worried about recurrence, or they're really stressed out, I can tell them something I probably never told you or I never really told anybody else, but I'm not out the woods.

My two kidneys have small little granules on them, and these are from my gene mutation that at any time can be activated to make a fifth cancer on either side of the kidney.

So I live without it every day that there's a possibility that I could have a fifth cancer, or one time I may develop a cancer or multiple cancers that require me to lose my kidney one day.

There is no guarantee except for I live.

No, I'm very faithful.

I love God, so I live by the blood of Jesus, that I'm going to stay cancer free.

But when I tell my patients, hey, I live with this and I'm not going to let it consume my life, Often they will listen and they'll listen to me.

I was like, if it's not consuming my life and I can go for it every day with this night in the forefront of my mind and live a fulfilled life.

You're gonna live a fulfilled life, too, as a breast cancer survivor.

And you're in it every day.

And, I mean, it's not like you can escape it based on what you've trained to do in your craft.

That word cancer comes up over and over again.

But I imagine demonstrating that living with that uncertainty and being able to relate is pretty powerful.

Well, also, it's triggering when people will roll their eyes.

When the family goes, oh, when she gets her mri, she gets all freaked out.

That's opening a can of worms every time you have to relive your diagnosis.

And all the tests I got triggered up until probably two years ago, where I finally started doing meditation things when I had to go into that MRI scanner.

But you're.

When you're in that scanner for 45 minutes, you're left alone with your thoughts and all the uncertainty.

So when patients, family members, kind of get frustrated or upset with the fact that they haven't gotten over it, it is like post traumatic stress disorder for some of them.

So you have to be understanding that they're reliving their trauma and.

No.

Fully getting over it.

No.

You always have a reminder.

So you've described your patients as feeling like family.

How does that impact now, how you do your job?

When I see a patient that comes in and I'm going to say, it doesn't matter their color, their religion, it doesn't matter if it's male or female.

You treat them.

You just feel this connection with them.

Like you want to treat them like your mama, your auntie, your uncle, your little sister.

And I don't know why that's always been the way I felt about how my patients are.

They just feel like family.

They just.

You're in the trenches with them.

Most often, I'm the one that is giving them the diagnosis because I did the biopsy or I'm the first person they've seen after they've gotten a diagnosis of a breast cancer.

And, you know, on the other side of the phone is usually a person telling them, hey, you got breast cancer?

They tell them what type, what grade it is, and you need to see a surgeon.

And they don't know anything.

So I have to get through the layers of, hey, you just got diagnosed.

This is your treatment plan.

You know, this is.

This is what we need to do.

But so we've been in the.

I watched them go from having a lump in the breast to having to have chemo, to losing their hair.

To getting their hair back, you know, going through radiation.

We've done the surgery and now two years later, and I just had my fifth year survivor come in that we've been through the whole process with that buns you for life.

And it's good and bad when you treat them like family.

And what I mean by that is, you know, not every outcome is perfect.

From your perspective as both a physician and a patient, what truly makes a difference in how care is delivered, in your opinion?

Having someone that is compassionate, that's gonna listen to you, be your advocate.

I always call myself the hope dealer because even when it's, you know, looks hopeless, give them some glimmer of hope that you're gonna do okay.

You need to have a cheerleader.

Your care team has to be a cheerleader.

And they have to instill in you for you to be an advocate so that you feel like you have a voice in your treatment plan making the most vulnerable time of someone's life easy for them.

And what I mean by that is, cancer doesn't stop the fact you got bills coming.

It doesn't stop the fact you may not have gas in your car.

It doesn't stop the fact your rent is due.

It doesn't stop the fact you already have a failing marriage just makes it worse.

And we have to understand, life still happens.

I think one of your prior podcast people said, life keeps life in life keeps life.

And even after cancer, I mean, it doesn't stop.

It sometimes magnifies the problems you have.

And so as a physician or a care team member, you have to be compassionate and you have to be.

You have to recognize that and see what.

It's not just treating the cancer.

It's treating their spiritual needs, their physical needs, their mental needs.

I mean, there's a whole bunch that goes to cancer care.

It's just not taking off the breast or giving them chemotherapy, is making sure that they feel supported in every aspect of cancer care.

And that's how I felt when I was a patient.

And I want my patients to feel that way for me.

My doctor told me, and you don't really hear this from surgeons, but he sat down with me and he was like, now look, I think that your gene got activated because you are overweight and you need to lose some weight.

And I think you're stressed out and you might need to do.

You might need to do a change of your job.

That's what he told me.

And then the funny thing is, I knew I was overweight, but I got the operative report So a lot of patients don't understand.

I get my op report, I know what to read.

I can understand what they say.

This was funny, but I got offended, but it's still funny.

But he laughed too.

When I got the op report, it said, had a little difficulty finding the left kidney due to increased adiposity.

Oh, my goodness.

That means you're fat.

So I highlighted it and I took it into our next, you know, whenever, whatever appointment I had.

And I showed Dr. Master, I said, look what you put.

He went, but is it true?

Oh, my goodness.

Said it is.

And he went, well, what are we going to do about it?

And I said, yes, sir.

And I got to working on it.

Yeah, I mean, but he was, did.

He did it in a very nice way.

And he keeps up to me to this day to make sure I'm doing okay.

I'm getting my scans.

I show him a picture that I've lost weight, and he's happy about that.

So, yeah, I mean, it just takes that right there.

Tells me he cared more about just taking out the cancer.

He cared about me getting healthy, so I didn't have a recurring cancer.

You've been deeply involved, Dr. Robertson, in expanding access to care and addressing disparities.

Why is that such a personal priority for you?

Not having access to care impacts your survival.

It really does.

I don't think people think about that.

I. I would take for granted, you know, the fact that where I got treated, top of the line, world renowned institution in Atlanta, had a car that had gas in it to drive to my appointments, could pay my co pay, could go and pay for my co pays for my scans.

Had no issue paying for my surgery.

Nope.

But not everybody has that.

Not everybody has a facility in their facility to go to that can offer them quality care.

Yes.

If you don't have transportation that can get you to where you need to go, you may not want to do your surgery, you may not want to do your radiation.

And we know that the further someone has to travel and if it becomes a headache for them, they may not complete their treatment.

Patients that don't have screening facilities for like colonoscopies or mammograms, they get delayed treatment or delayed in diagnosis and then delayed treatment and their outcomes are worse.

And you know, rural places and underserved places, this is, this is what happens.

And when I say underserved, I also mean like the inner city.

You tell people to exercise so they can lower their risk for breast cancer or different cancers.

And they might get shot going outside.

Yeah.

So our food deserts where you don't have food or healthy places to, you know, facilities to get healthy food from, I mean, all this goes into access to care and barriers.

And when you have no access to care and you have all these barriers thrown up just to live and to be treated with cancer, that's a problem.

You don't want your patients to be able to get their screenings, come in with earlier stage cancers if they get diagnosed or have access to the same treatment.

You want equal treatment for everyone.

It shouldn't matter.

Your outcome shouldn't matter based upon where you live or your race or whether you're in the, on farmland or whether you're in the inner city.

Everyone should have equal access to treatment.

That should be a God given right.

When you think about the physician you were before your diagnosis and the one you are today, what has changed?

Priorities.

I love breast cancer patients, I love breast cancer care.

But when I go home, sometimes I turn on Bravo TV and I watch every Real Housewife franchise.

I can watch smut tv.

I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it.

You have to know how to put up boundaries.

I'm going to put my health first.

I had no control over my schedule when I was in private practice.

Someone made my schedule for me, which was, it was an absolute nightmare.

At a certain time I'm out of there.

I'm not going to be there till 7 o' clock at night.

Make it more time for my family.

My parents are 79 years old and I want to make sure that at every holiday or event and being back Little Rock, of course they live closer to me because they live in Memphis, but that's important because they're not going to be around forever.

Being there for important life events for my friends and family and honestly, just not being a type A personality.

I mean, I'm still type A, but what I mean by that is knowing there's some things you have no control over.

You have no control over a lot of things in life and sometimes you got to pick your battles.

I live unapologetically, me.

I'm going to love who I want to love.

I want to live how I want to live.

I'm not going to care what other people say.

They're not going to define me, put me in a box.

I'm going to be me authentically.

And I don't, I don't really.

I'm not going to just be boxed in anymore.

I'm not going to let someone define what life Means for me.

And I tell everybody that my life is mine, mine and the Lord's.

As I say, I'm gonna do things within in order, but not live so scared, so meek, so structured.

My life has a lot of disorder now, and I actually like that.

Really, in certain things.

Yeah.

If my house is messy, my house is gonna stay messy.

Now, I love my things in order, but, you know, having a cup on the counter would drive me crazy before I got cancer, you know, and.

Or not having my things lined up just so pink here, blue here, green here.

I want these mix.

I want these hangers that are be all white.

Yeah, that doesn't matter anymore.

Heck, I'm trying to.

I'm trying to stay alive.

Well, after everything you've experienced both professionally and personally, what continues to drive you to do this very difficult work every day?

Just knowing is what I was supposed to do.

I don't know, you know, when you.

Not to get all biblical, but God writes books for you.

That's how I feel.

That's what I know.

You have your story laid out, and it's what you do to fulfill that story.

And just knowing that I'm supposed to be a breast cancer specialist who's compassionate, who's caring, who can bring a little bit of prayer to my patients, who can be understanding and just make their life easier when they're going through a vulnerable state.

I just love what I do.

I just do.

I love what I do.

And I think by me being now a survivor, being able to sit there with them because I couldn't understand why I got cancer in the first place, but what I feel is that it was so I could understand what they go through.

And I feel that makes me a better doctor because I'm able to cross the divide, cross the.

I'm able to be on the other side of the table with them.

I know how it feels to sit in that chair.

So there are a lot of things that I ask that I can talk to them about that they may not feel comfortable talking to their other providers about, like, hey, how are you doing with this mentally, this diagnosis?

You know, I was really angry when I got diagnosed.

Yeah, I was.

I'm angry too, but I feel guilty saying that.

And then they'll cry some, let down their guard.

Yeah, that I'm not gonna be one of my things.

I don't like talking to patients when they're on the table, when they have a new diet.

When I'm first walking into that room and I have the white coat on.

Sometimes I don't even wear my white coat.

But I don't want them on that table with a gown on.

It's a cold, sterile room.

And it's just me above them, talking or sitting below them.

I actually take them off the table and I put them in a chair and I roll a stool up beside them like my doctor did me, even though I didn't listen to what they were saying.

But I roll up a stool beside them and I talk to them face to face, and I'll.

You know, because sometimes I want to touch them if they're crying.

I want to.

Want to put my hand on their knee or touch their back or hug them.

You know, sometimes they need to feel that your doctor understands what they're going through and all of that.

Just me.

And that's.

I love that.

I love taking care of my patients.

It gives me.

I feel like it gives me purpose in life.

But what I will say is, when you ask me, how have I changed, Even though this gives me purpose in life?

The thing that cancer taught me the most was that my identity is not my job.

Because that's what I felt, that I was my job.

Breast cancer was my life.

That was my identity.

If I didn't have.

If I wasn't a breast cancer specialist or a surgeon, I had no identity.

My identity is in Christ first.

And then he lays out my steps to tell me what my next things or things I should do, the next chapters of my life.

And once I finally realized that, because that's what I had to really come to, that my identity was not my job, it made things so much easier, and it made me enjoy taking care of patients even more.

Well, thank you, Dr. Robertson.

Your perspective is incredibly powerful, and we're grateful you shared it with us today before we close, whether someone listening is a patient, a caregiver, possibly a physician who is now on the other side just like you have been, but trying to make sense of this situation.

Are there any words you want to sum up based on your own experience?

Never give up hope.

Try to figure out what your AC will be.

That's a good line.

Find out what.

How are you going to make this worth something?

Meaning cancer doesn't define you.

Don't let that be your identity.

See what you can do to make somebody else's life better.

Advocate for people.

If someone you hear gets diagnosed with a cancer that you had, be like, hey, I may talk to them about that and let them know that I'm on the other side of this.

Be a listening ear, but don't let cancer define you.

Find out what your AC will be your after cancer life.

Dr. Yara Robertson, thank you for sharing your story and for being on the HOPE cast.

Thanks for having me sa.