Cancer and Clinical Services Patient Stories

A college professor and mother of three, Nancy Rudd is a no-nonsense woman. And her message is clear when it comes to encouraging others to get timely cancer screenings.

“Sometimes I think fear holds us in place and causes us to avoid taking actions that scare us. When it comes to preventive cancer screening, that just simply isn’t acceptable. Decades of research show that early detection saves lives, and there are scientifically backed tests to find cancers early. What a gift!  As a breast cancer survivor, I want everyone to hear my direct message: Just do it! Push the fear aside and be proactive with your cancer screening because early detection saves lives.”

Nancy can personally speak to the power of early detection. She was diagnosed with stage I breast cancer on a screening mammogram in November 2020. She was no stranger to screening mammography, though; it had been a regular part of Nancy’s life since she was 34 years old, when she was diagnosed with a fibrocystic condition of the breast.

She says she is incredibly grateful that her cancer was caught in its earliest stages when it was most treatable. She underwent a lumpectomy of the right breast followed by five treatments of prone, accelerated partial-breast irradiation (APBI) to reduce the risk of recurrence. APBI is an option for women with certain types of early-stage breast cancer and offers the benefit of highly focused therapy in a shorter time.

Nancy says having her radiation therapy in a shorter, higher-dose regimen was helpful in getting her back to normal life faster and reducing trips to the hospital during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

When her daughter asked her what she would like for Christmas, Nancy said she wanted just one thing for the rest of her life: for her daughter, then age 40, to get her annual screening mammogram. Nancy takes every opportunity to encourage people in her life to get timely cancer screenings — breast, colon, prostate, skin and lung, if applicable.

“Early detection saves lives, and I feel so very fortunate to have benefited from this in my own life,” she adds. 

Nancy stays busy as a professor emeritus in The Ohio State University Department of Human Sciences. She teaches part-time in the freshman seminar program in Ohio State’s College of Arts & Sciences, and she conducts research on human behavior specifically related to culture, body image and personal aesthetics. She enjoys spending time with her family, which includes her husband, three adult children and five furry feline friends.