‘I Needed To Give Myself More Grace:’ Beloved FOX Reporter Ayesha Khan, 40, On How She’s Staying Strong While Fighting Cancer

Khan, who worked at TV stations in Charleston, South Carolina, St. Louis, Missouri and Salisbury, Maryland before landing in Washington DC, also speaks to the importance of taking time to directly address the psychological impacts of going through cancer treatment. "My team of doctors introduced me to the Bill Richards Center for Healing located within the Aquilino Cancer Center in Montgomery County, where I am currently being treated," she said. "The entire third floor is a purpose-built space designed to help patients and their families cope with the psychological effects of cancer, even as the patient follows state-of-the-art clinical treatment protocols."

The center offers yoga sessions, nutrition courses, cooking classes, and mindfulness-based stress reduction training. All of these resources are free for cancer fighters who live in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Khan shared how meaningful this kind of support has been for her: "The experience of dealing with such a major medical diagnosis meant, I needed to somehow protect and focus on my mental stability and well-being. I have realized that I needed to just give myself more grace."

Through the Aquilino Cancer Center in Rockville, Maryland, Khan has also found resources to help cancer fighters deal with the often extreme financial costs of having cancer. The Center (in Montgomery County) works with people to figure out how to make the financial burden of the disease more manageable. Another challenge that the Center provides support for is hair loss. "Wigs and head coverings can be very expensive even with insurance, but the cancer center helps with that too," Khan said. Oncology nurse navigator Michele McBridge says that with the help of the cancer center, these wigs are often free.

See below for the list of additional resources Ayesha Khan recommends for her viewers who are battling cancer:

Financial Assistance:

• Pink Cancer Treatment Foundation:  www.pnkctf.org or 1-855-PNK-CURE
• The Pink Fund:  www.pinkfund.org or 1-877-234-PINK
• The Donna Foundation:  https://thedonnafoundation.org or 1-877-236-6626
• Smiley Wiley Breast Cancer Foundation:  www.smileywiley.org or 561-632-8631
• Donna M. Saunders Foundation:  http://dmsfinc.com
• Cancer Care: www.cancercare.org/financial or 1-800-813-HOPE
• Health Well Foundation: www.healthwellfoundation.org or 1-800-675-8416
• For 3 Sisters: www.f3s.org or 301-812-9003
• Hopkins Breast Cancer Foundation: https://hopkinsbcinc.org or 301-755-6253
• Help Now Fund: http://thebreastcancercharities.org/help-now-fund or 936-231-8460
• Family Reach: https://familyreach.org/family-eligibility (children must be impacted to apply)
• Cleaning For A Reason: www.cleaningforareason.org or 1-877-337-3348

Transportation:

• American Cancer Society: www.cancer.org/treatment/support-programs-and-services or 1-800-227-2345
• Step Sisters: www.stepsisters.org; must contact nurse navigator for assistance 571-472-0744

Wigs/Breast Prosthesis and Cold Cap funding:

• Capital Cold Cap Fund in DC: https://www.coldcapitalfund.org
• American Cancer Society: www.cancer.org/about-us/local/virginia.html or 703-938-5550
• Hope Scarves: www.hopescarves.org or 502-333-9715
• E-Beauty: http://www.ebeauty.com/wigs-color/
• Bravadas: https://bravadas.com or 703-352-4247
• TLC: www.tlcdirect.org or 1-800-850-9445
• The Pink Lily: www.thepinklily.net or 855-746-5545
• Nordstrom: https://shop.nordstrom.com/content/breast-prosthesis-program
• Knitted Knockers: www.knittedknockers.org or 360-595-3278

Ayesha Khan's Cancer Diagnosis

It was Friday, July 20, 2021; it was a hot summer day in the DMV area. Ayesha Khan was meeting a co-worker in the field to work on a story, but when she arrived, she was on the phone with her doctor.

Her doctor said: "Brace yourself, the biopsy came back…"

"All he had to say was 'brace yourself' and I just knew," Khan says. Her worst fear was confirmed: she had breast cancer.

More specifically, the tumor was classified as invasive ductal carcinoma. This is the most common type of breast cancer; about eight in 10 invasive breast cancers are invasive (or infiltrating) ductal carcinomas. Khan's tumor was in two different places, right behind the nipple; one was 2.8 centimeters in size, and the other was 1.1 centimeters.

Aggressive Breast Cancer in Young Women

Khan received her devastating diagnosis at age 39, a few weeks shy of her 40th birthday. That is relatively young to receive a breast cancer diagnosis, considering organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Cancer Society recommend women start getting yearly mammograms when they turn 45 years old. Women ages 45 to 54 should get a mammogram every year.

Breast cancer mostly occurs in older women, but it is possible for women under the age of 45 like Khan to be diagnosed. About 9% of all new breast cancer cases in the U.S. are found in women younger than 45.

"And just like any woman," Khan says, "I never imagined being that statistic."

In some ways, a diagnosis for a younger woman can often be even more devastating, Dr. Ann Partridge, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, tells SurvivorNet during a previous interview. This is because the disease is likely to be a more aggressive form of the disease and at an advanced stage, as screening for younger women is not standard.

Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer

Chemotherapy for breast cancer uses strong drugs to kill cancer all over the body. It is possible that patients get this treatment to shrink a tumor before surgery, afterward to get rid of any remaining cancer cells or on its own if the patient cannot have surgery.

In Ayesha Khan's case, she is having chemotherapy after surgery to get rid of the remaining cancer cells that have spread to her lymph nodes.

An Overview of Breast Cancer Treatment

Whether or not to have chemotherapy can also be the patient's choice, depending on their age, the type of cancer they have and its stage.

If the patient's breast cancer is triple-negative, which means the three main types of receptors estrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein do not fuel the cancer, chemotherapy is typically the treatment. This is because the cancer does not respond to certain targeted therapies.

Women who are diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer have high levels of the HER2 protein on the outside of their cancer cells. For patients with early-stage disease, meaning they have relatively small tumors and no lymph involvement, a number of HER2-directed therapies have dramatically changed the landscape. These include chemotherapy drug trastuzumab (brand name: Herceptin), as well as pertuzumab (brand name: Perjeta), which is a monoclonal antibody used in combination with chemotherapy.

Breast Cancer Surgery

Since Ayesha Khan's tumor was located directly behind her nipple, she was worried about losing it during surgery.

Her doctor, Dr. Colette Magnant of Maryland Oncology Hematology, has explained that she would "do everything she can" to surgically spare Khan's nipple, however, Dr. Magnant also told Khan to "be prepared for losing the entire breast."

If you are faced with the choice of whether to reconstruct your breast after cancer, figuring out how to preserve your natural appearance is an important issue.

What is Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy?

In a procedure called the nipple-sparing mastectomy, doctors use special techniques to shell out a woman's breast, leaving the skin, and the nipple, intact. The idea is to maintain, as close as possible, the natural look of the breast. After mastectomy, a plastic surgeon will use either an implant or the woman's own tissue to recreate the breast. When a woman's own tissue is used, doctors typically take it from fat in the patient's lower abdomen.

Dr. Irene Wapnir, a breast surgeon at Stanford Medicine, tells SurvivorNet this is "certainly the ideal procedure for those women who chose to have prophylactic mastectomy, who don't yet have breast cancer." This is not the case for Khan, but it is extremely important to her to save her nipple.

If sparing her nipple does not work, as Dr. Magnant has said, a complete mastectomy will take place; this procedure is the removal of the entire breast during surgery.

Contributing: Sydney Schaefer

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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