LOS ANGELES (Jan. 31, 2025) — Mary Ann Loef and her husband of 38 years, Peter, were planning the trip of a lifetime—a round-the-world cruise—when she found a lump in her breast. Mary Ann thought her cancer diagnosis would postpone her dream vacation, but thanks to expedited treatment from the team at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, she has set sail.
“Mary Ann and her husband told me that he had been working for 45 years, was retiring at the end of the year, and that they were planning this trip,” said breast surgical oncologist Ronald Hurst, MD. “I worked to quickly determine her tumor type, the treatment that she would need and whether it could be completed in time.”
Hurst, who saw Loef at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Breast Health, first needed to find out whether the cancer was HER2 positive so he would know whether Loef would need to complete chemotherapy and immunotherapy before undergoing surgery to remove the tumor. Hurst also needed to determine whether the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes, and whether it was likely to recur, so he would know whether she would need to follow surgery with chemotherapy.
“If you don’t push things along, some of these steps can take weeks,” said Hurst, who also sees patients at The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai Cancer. “I became her advocate because I knew her trip was already planned, and I think we cut at least a month from the usual timeline. Everything aligned perfectly and we were able to complete surgery and determine her full course of treatment within two weeks.”
After finding the lump and having a mammogram at RadNet Westchester Advanced Imaging and a biopsy at RadNet Mink Radiology—both Cedars-Sinai affiliates—Loef was referred to Hurst by her primary provider.
It was September, and she and her husband had a January departure date set for the cruise. Hurst diagnosed an early-stage HER2-negative, estrogen-driven tumor that was localized to a small segment of her breast and had not spread. This meant she was a candidate for breast-conserving surgery and would not need chemotherapy or immunotherapy before or after the procedure.
“It was such a relief because I thought I was going to be in the hospital for a week,” she said. “But Dr. Hurst said I would be home by lunchtime. I had just a few stitches, and it was almost painless. Tylenol was the only pain medicine I needed.”
Hurst said many people diagnosed with breast cancer imagine they have a much more difficult road ahead.
“Most patients, when they hear a cancer diagnosis, automatically think of mastectomy and chemotherapy, with a lengthy recovery and side effects. And I have to tell them to take a deep breath, because that’s not necessarily going to be their journey,” Hurst said. “If it is, we know how to help them through that, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
In fact, many patients with early-stage breast cancer are candidates for breast-conserving surgery, where the tumor and a perimeter of normal tissue are removed but the breast is preserved, Hurst said. And some types of cancers can be managed without chemotherapy.
“We treat breast cancer one patient at a time,” said Armando Giuliano, MD, director of the Division of Surgical Oncology at Cedars-Sinai. “There are many factors in addition to the medical diagnosis that need to be taken into account, including quality of life and peace of mind for the patient.”
Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Breast Health, a partnership between Cedars-Sinai, Breastlink and RadNet, offers a one-stop shop for screening, evaluation and diagnosis of breast cancer—under the care of Hurst and his colleague Marissa K. Boyle, MD, a surgical oncologist. The goal is to speed patients through the initial steps of imaging and biopsy, to get them more quickly into treatment.
With surgery behind her, Loef completed four weeks of radiotherapy before her departure. She saw Lauren Midthun, MD, a medical oncologist at The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, who prescribed a hormone suppressor that Loef will take for five years to help prevent cancer recurrence.
During their four-month world cruise, she and her husband will visit Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, the Cape Verde Islands, Italy, Greece, Turkey, France, Spain, Corsica, Marseille, Montenegro, Malta, Morocco, the Canary Islands, Colombia, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico.
“Our honeymoon was a cruise, and for 38 years, that’s been our preferred method of vacationing,” Loef said. “During all that time, my husband has been so devoted to providing for our family, and this round-the-world trip has been our dream. The thought of not getting to go through with it really was weighing heavily on me, because he deserves this, and it will just be really, really, really something very special to share.”
Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: What Does It Mean to Have Dense Breasts?
