“I’m a runner, and I work out a lot,” says Wanliss, an attorney who was a sprinter on her college track team, “and I commute long distances for my work, so I stand a lot too. I didn’t attribute it to anything specific, just the general aches and pains of being a New Yorker.”

A short time later when Wanliss saw her OB-GYN for her annual checkup, she discovered the true source of the symptoms: a large uterine fibroid—a common, noncancerous growth of the uterus that is especially prevalent in Black women, who are about three times more likely than white women to develop fibroids.

Her symptoms only grew worse. Wanliss’s stomach was so bloated she stopped wearing fitted or high-waisted clothing. She experienced an extremely painful period, which was occurring every three weeks instead of the usual four. And she struggled to get through the workday due to a constant urge to urinate.

That’s when she saw Dr. Michael Lewis, Vice Chief of Gynecology and Director of Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Dr. Lewis immediately saw that the problems she described were textbook fibroid symptoms. “Dr. Lewis knew exactly what I was talking about and reassured me that this could be handled swiftly and I’ll go back to feeling myself again,” Wanliss says. “I trusted him.”

After a brief surgery, Wanliss was back on track—and even went on a long-planned trip to Italy three and a half weeks later. Today, her life has “pretty much returned to normal.” She commutes to work every day, her abdomen is once again flat, she no longer feels pressure or pain, and her period is now regular.

“I feel lighter and more energetic,” she says. “I really do love to get out there for a run.”

And she remains grateful for Dr. Lewis, not only because she got her life back but “for hearing my concerns and knowing that what I was feeling wasn’t made up in my head. And for that, I’m forever thankful.”

“We worked nonstop. It was always work, work, work,” Mosquera says. “But I always went for my yearly physical and mammogram.”

It was during one of those routine mammograms that her local doctors in New Jersey noticed an area of dense tissue, which was biopsied a year later and determined to be cancerous.

“They immediately offered me surgery, but I didn’t feel close to those doctors,” she says. “Something inside me said to look for someone else.”

A friend recommended her to Roshni Rao, MD, Chief of the Breast Surgery Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. And “since day one,” says Mosquera, “it was like my mother was talking to me.”

Mosquera “came to us with a very early diagnosis of breast cancer,” says Dr. Rao, “and she was scared and was concerned that she wouldn’t get through the surgery.”

Indeed, Mosquera gets emotional remembering her experience with Dr. Rao ahead of her lumpectomy.

“I didn’t want to get the surgery. I didn’t know if I would be OK after the surgery, but she went through all the explanations again,” Mosquera says with tears in her eyes. “She explained that now, early, is the time to get the surgery. I trusted Dr. Rao 100 percent. And everything she said would happen did, and I went home at the end of the day.”

Dr. Rao says that Mosquera “did fantastic” and benefited from being able to receive intraoperative radiation at the time of her surgery—something she could only get at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia.

Five years later, Mosquera is cancer-free. “Dr. Rao really changed my life,” she says. “For any woman that I meet, I say, ‘Continue doing your mammograms, but if you need it, get care immediately and go to Dr. Rao.’”