Jill Martin has just shared that she will undergo urgent surgery to repair the damage that radiation therapy for breast cancer has done to her skin.
“Just when you think the fight is over, life reminds you that healing isn’t always linear,” the TODAY lifestyle contributor says about her return to the hospital on Friday, Jan. 9.
She emphasizes she’s going in as a reconstructive patient, not as a cancer patient.
“It’s preventative and proactive — an emergency only in the sense that if we don’t act now, it could turn into something much bigger," she says. "It’s important to say this clearly: my cancer is not back.”
Martin was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, then underwent a double mastectomy and reconstruction.
Most of the time, this operation goes seamlessly without complications, Dr. Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System and one of Martin’s doctors, tells TODAY.com.
But sometimes, additional treatment, especially radiation — which is done directly to the skin of the affected breast — can impact wound healing and cause wound breakdown in some patients, she adds.
“When a person has a mastectomy, obviously the goal is to get all the breast cancer out,” Port explains.
“But there's another goal, especially in a BRCA mutation carrier like Jill ... to get all the breast tissue out. And when you do that, the skin left behind can be very thin. … It's just a lot for the skin to tolerate.”
When that happens, doctors sometimes have to preemptively replace the weakest part of the skin with tissue taken from another part of the patient’s body to make sure that the wound stays closed and heals well, Port says. She compares it to a more complex version of a skin graft.
In Jill's case, doctors are taking action now to prevent a sudden opening of the wound, which would become an emergency and could lead to an infection, Port says.
Martin says she’ll be in the hospital for at least three nights, then home recovering for a few weeks. This is her eighth surgery or procedure in two years.
“I feel worn out and grateful all at once,” she says. “Sometimes it feels like it never really ends. And still — I’m grateful. Grateful for early action, for great doctors, and for the chance to keep moving forward.”
Martin carries the BRCA 2 gene mutation, which increases the risk of breast and other cancers, as does her father.
Her complications drive home the importance of getting genetic testing to find out whether a person is a mutation carrier, which can lead to earlier interventions, Port says.
“The earlier the detection, the higher the chance of not needing additional treatment,” she notes.
“And of course, if you get tested, there is always the option of doing the surgery preventively when there's no cancer involved. (Then) there's no treatment to follow."
