Meet the Models, NYC: Paula Froehle
Paula Froehle was newly married and moving into a new home with her husband when her yearly mammogram came back suspicious. During her follow up visit, the “air in the room was different.” She would go on to get a diagnosis of lobular carcinoma in her right breast. Like most newly diagnosed, she was “alarmed and terrified.”
Her incredible medical team helped calm her fears and she went on to have a mastectomy and reconstruction. Her entrance into the breast cancer world, though jarring, would go on to shape more than just her health. A filmmaker herself, connecting with other women opened her eyes to a world of women who seek to go flat after surgery. After learning many of them are denied this decision, or that insurance doesn’t cover that choice, Paula wanted to raise awareness. She began filming a documentary following women around the world (nicknamed “flatties”) to showcase the struggle many women have to choose what is best for their body: “It has been so inspiring for me to meet these incredibly strong and powerful women. Though I chose to reconstruct, the idea that any women has an experience where doctors deny them what they want for their bodies is horrifying to me.” Paula aims to release the film a year from now.
When reflecting on her own journey, Paula is quick to note how grateful she is for her personal tribe. Chiefly her husband, who was incredible during treatment, even starting a text chain with Paula’s nine closest friends to give updates and receive words of support. In addition, her three sisters were “incredible in the way they rallied around me.” In all, Paula aims to be a resource for women newly diagnosed because she uniquely knows how jarring a diagnosis-and the lasting effects of it-can have: “there still seems to be this sense of quiet about breast cancer. I understand it is very personal, but I have been shocked that no matter who I speak to, they are 1 degree separated from breast cancer. There is a fear you live with about anything else that happens that it is the cancer returning.”