This radiation therapist shed her white coat for a camera to create a breast cancer film
As Nia Bailey leaves the ChristianaCare Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in Stanton this weekend, she’ll transition from radiation therapist to filmmaker as she swaps out her hospital attire for a dazzling outfit fit for the screening of her documentary.
Bailey, 30, has worked at the hospital for nine years, giving radiation treatments to patients dealing with various types of cancer.
“As a radiation therapist, we’re with them for four to six weeks, so you really gain a strong rapport with them,” said Bailey.
These close bonds led her to befriending a young woman named Jaclynn Smith, a patient of Bailey’s who felt a lump in her breast but was told by her gynecologist not to worry about it.
When the woman later went to get her IUD out, an inter-uterine device that is a form of birth control, her gynecologist found a bigger lump that was then x-rayed, revealing that Jaclynn had cancer.
Although she wanted to start a family, she had no time to harvest her eggs before meeting Bailey for radiation treatment. Both Bailey and Smith thought she was getting better, but a couple months later, her cancer metastasized, spread to her brain, and she passed away shortly after, said Bailey.
The documentary
Smith’s story echoes that of other women who questioned their health status and were told they were too young, they shouldn’t worry about cancer or were dismissed in other ways, said Bailey, and this was the catalyst for making breast cancer awareness part of her life’s mission.
“I really wanted to show, not only that whole piece of advocacy, but that you can survive after a diagnosis,” she said. “So that was the reason why I did the documentary. I think one day I just had a fleeting thought of Jaclynn and was like, ‘OK, it’s time to do it.’ ”
While out of work for six weeks recovering from a hip surgery in Dec. 2021, Bailey chose to pause the "Golden Girls'' reruns and start working on the documentary script, she said.
By January 2022, the script, which served as a talking point for her conversations throughout the documentary, was finished.
With help from some friends, Bailey was able to film the documentary over two days in February.
Bailey’s documentary, screening at Theatre N in Wilmington on Saturday, June 10, is “A Letter To My Sisters: A Breast Cancer Documentary For Young Women.'' It focuses on three young women dealing with life after a breast cancer diagnosis.
Janique Rivera, a Jamaican, Asian and Puerto Rican woman, was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in her 20s. Brenda Dorantes is a Mexican woman who was diagnosed in her 30s. Lynne Mitchell is a white woman who was diagnosed with TNBC in her 40s.
Bailey, who has a doctorate degree, said after all the reading she did to get her degrees, she wanted a more refreshing approach to raising awareness about breast cancer that would engage people better than written text would.
“That’s how I thought to do the documentary because I think it captures more people than listening to a presentation or reading something,” said Bailey. “And like I said, I’ve really become friendly with a lot of my patients and their stories are so spectacular that I definitely wanted them to tell their stories.''
Bailey calls each of the women a “thriver,” a title she gives all her patients. It comes from her dad, who had prostate cancer and used the word to describe himself.
“He said surviving is just making it. Thriving is not just that you are making it, but that you are succeeding. That rhetoric makes it more hopeful and lighthearted,” she said, adding that many of her patients find hope in the message.
Rewriting the narrative
Bailey’s time in the industry has shown that many people do not know the proper breast cancer precautions. She also takes issue with some advisories from health care organizations she says do not adequately advocate for cancer prevention.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advises women to begin getting mammograms at age 40, but Bailey feels this is too old, as she has treated patients in their twenties and thirties battling breast cancer.
The task force states:
“The decision to start screening mammography in women prior to age 50 years should be an individual one. Women who place a higher value on the potential benefit than the potential harms may choose to begin biennial screening between the ages of 40 and 49 years.”
The task force adds that aside from false-positive results and unnecessary biopsies, “women undergoing regular screening mammography are at risk for the diagnosis and treatment of noninvasive and invasive breast cancer that would otherwise not have become a threat to their health, or even apparent, during their lifetime.”
“That’s ridiculous. A patient of mine was 24 and just passed away, so 40 is too late,” said Bailey, adding that this factored into her choosing women of different ages and backgrounds to feature in her film.
A breast cancer journey
Rivera, one of the women featured in the film, was 29 when she was diagnosed with TNBC in January 2018 after she was told by her doctors that she was too young to get cancer and had nothing to worry about.
Rivera said she went back and forth between remission and cancer diagnoses, repeatedly being told by doctors that her cancer had not returned and that a new chemo treatment was working better than Rivera suspected.
Since her initial remission, Rivera went through another bout of cancer in her breast that resulted in a full mastectomy on her right side in 2018; a cancerous mass in her right lung in Feb. 2020, and a five-centimeter tumor on the right side of her brain in Dec. 2022.
“At that point, it was like ‘oh s---. OK, no matter what I do it’s gonna come back and this is just what it is. I’m gonna die,'” said Rivera.
After having brain surgery in 2020, Rivera has been receiving immunotherapy treatments and remains in remission.
During that “detrimental'' period, she lost weight and was severely depressed, but used her children as a driving force to continue fighting, she said.
She shared her journey in Bailey’s documentary to help other women, she said. She hopes her story inspires others to stay positive and remember that their lives don’t end if they are diagnosed with cancer.
“Being able to share my story on such a large platform, it maybe will open the eyes of someone else that’s going through, or a family member of someone that’s going through, what I had been through,” she said. “And I felt like it was just my obligation to do so.”
Breast cancer by the numbers
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) reports that every two minutes, a woman in the U.S. is diagnosed with breast cancer and every 15 seconds, a woman in the world is diagnosed.
About 1 in eight women (12.9%) in the U.S. will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, with men being diagnosed, too, according to BCRF.
In Delaware, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among females, with the state ranking No. 12 in the nation for female breast cancer incidence between 2014 and 2018, according the 2022 Breast Cancer Data Brief from the Delaware Division of Public Health (DPH).
Delaware ranks No. 15 in the nation for female breast cancer mortality between 2014 and 2018, the second most common cause of cancer death nationwide and statewide, the brief states. (A reported 4, 237 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in Delaware during that time.)
Higher rates of breast cancer were found among women of color, the brief reported.
Documentary reception
The documentary premiered at the Philadelphia Country Club in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania in Oct. 2022, followed by a screening at Theatre N in Wilmington in December.
Despite being Bailey’s first foray into the documentary world, the reaction to her labor of love was more than she could’ve hoped for.
“What made me the happiest is at the very end, literally as people are walking out, you hear conversation like, ‘I’m gonna set up my mammogram’ or ‘You know what? My aunt did have breast cancer. Let me figure out what age,’” she said.
As she popped into the screening room every so often, she could see some viewers crying one moment and laughing the next, a testament to how layered cancer is and how impactful hearing the voices of the three thrivers is.
“That just makes me so proud of them because it’s not like you ever want to get diagnosed with anything, but to see them happy to see themselves on screen and just sharing their stories and then people coming up to them, other young thrivers ... that made me so excited and happy because that’s all I ever wanted.
“By them receiving that information, I feel like Jaclynn’s death was not in vain.”
What’s next for Bailey?
Bailey’s documentary efforts have driven her to research more about breast cancer, including clinical trials, outcomes among different demographics and the many ways cancer can manifest itself.
Her documentary also has helped her see patients on a personal level, as more than people facing a terrible disease, but those with lives as varied and fulfilling as her own.
“My dad would tell me that, but I don’t think it really sunk in until this. Janique Rivera is a breast cancer thriver, but she’s also a mom. She's also a sister. She also is now a wife, and it just made me look at the whole person,” she said.
Bailey believes a positive mindset can greatly impact a patient’s cancer journey, something Rivera echoed, and hopes to do more community outreach to engage with people about their journeys.
While she doesn’t yet know if that means another documentary is in her future or if she’ll be taking a step back from her day-to-day as a radiation therapist some day, continuing to advocate on behalf of those battling breast cancer and sharing preventative measures is what she hopes to continue doing in any way she can.
“It’s horrible seeing somebody get the cancer diagnosis and having to go through radiation. It’s not easy,” she said. “The goal ultimately is to save lives. I never want anybody else to say, “I lost somebody from breast cancer,' and I think if we can educate in a way that grabs peoples’ attention, I’ll keep doing it. I think that’s kind of my purpose.”
The screening will be held at 1 p.m. June 10 at at Theatre N, located at 1007 N. Orange St., Wilmington. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at www.drniaimanibailey.com or at the door.
Got a tip or a story idea? Contact Krys'tal Griffin at kgriffin@delawareonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Nia Bailey, radiation therapist, makes breast cancer documentary
