In the last three months, Miami-Dade prosecutor Christine Zahralban lost both her breasts and 13 inches of her long black hair, which, beside minor trims, hadn't been cut since the first grade.
But she'll soon gain a new title: breast cancer survivor.
Zahralban, 39, starts chemotherapy Thursday. It likely will cause the rest of her mane to fall out, but it also will help ensure she remains cancer-free, that she resumes her legal career -- and retains a pulpit from which to educate young women about the cancer-screening test that saved her life: an MRI.
"Her tenacity is playing out like in the courtroom," said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, whose mother and sister died last year of breast cancer. "She's been dogged in questioning the doctors, pitting them against each other, like you would on cross examination."
For weeks, Zahralban worried the effects from chemotherapy would advertise her illness to the world.
But when she snipped her hair off last week at a Pinecrest beauty salon -- to donate it to the Locks of Love charity -- Zahralban realized she could handle whatever came. It helped that her sister, former sister-in-law and even the stylist's stepdaughter lopped off their hair at the same time in support of her. "I had such an emotional attachment to it, but it's just hair," Zahralban said. "It grows back."
All the changes have unfolded in dizzying snippets, starting in June: There was the afternoon Oprah Winfrey helped save her life, the battle with the insurance company over the expensive MRI and then, finally, the surgery.
Zahralban, a former appellate lawyer for the state attorney general's office, has worked for the state attorney's office for 10 years, earning a reputation as a dogged researcher and feisty courtroom litigator.
Among her high-profile cases: Kirk Billie, convicted of drowning his two sons in a West Miami-Dade canal in 1997; the five men accused of kidnapping, raping and killing South Beach visitor Ana Maria Angel in 2002; and a 2004 racketeering case at Miami International Airport that resulted in more than 20 convictions.
Last November, Zahralban discovered lumps in her left breast. Her mother was a breast cancer survivor. Zahralban quickly underwent mammograms and ultrasounds.
Doctors said the lumps were common fluid cysts sometimes caused by caffeine. Zahralban's panic subsided.
'DO YOU HEAR ME?'
But in June, Zahralban was dozing on her couch when actress Christina Applegate appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, touting benefits of breast MRIs for certain women.
"The only thing I can remember is Oprah saying over and over, 'Ladies, do you hear me? Mammograms and ultrasounds don't always pick up cancer. You must fight the insurance companies,' " Zahralban said.
Her medical insurance company did not want to cover the MRI, which is particularly useful in detecting abnormalities in young women with dense breasts. Doctors stress that the MRI is valuable but is not always practical for initial screening.
But doctors Mary Kay Peterson and Michael Katin convinced Blue Cross Blue Shield to cover the MRI because of Zahralban's family history.
Peterson, director of Women's Imaging Radiology at Regional Center in Fort Myers, reviewed the test image in July and saw a previously undetected cancer growth in Zahralban's left breast.
"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is Christine.' I had to look at the name again," Peterson said.
Zahralban turned her zeal for legal research toward medicine, stacking her Miami apartment with books on breast cancer and grilling two top surgeons and five oncologists, as well as survivors.
Doctors couldn't agree whether to remove just the lump, one breast or both breasts. In the end, Zahralban made the decision by gut instinct: a double mastectomy. It was the right call. During surgery last month, doctors found another cancerous growth in her right breast.
'GUT FEELING'
"Everyone is different, but some women just have their gut feeling, and that instinct has to be harnessed," said Zahralban's oncologist, Elizabeth Tan-Chiu of Davie, who has three patients who credit Oprah for spurring them to test for what turned out to be breast cancer.
The decision to undergo chemo was not easy, either, and for reasons beyond the physical drain on the body. Blouses and jackets hide chest scars, but chemo's impact is fairly apparent.
To harvest good from the bad, Zahralban decided to donate her carefully maintained mane -- besides minor trims, she'd last cut it in the first grade -- to Locks of Love, which provides wigs for ill children who have lost their hair.
Friday night, Zahralban and her relatives gathered at The Strand beauty salon. So did Linda Mims, a state attorney's office administrator, and pal Maria Masters, 46, who lost both breasts to advanced cancer after she missed her annual mammogram. Stylist Teri Orta lopped 13 inches from her sister, Helen Zahralban, 27. Ten more inches came off former sister-in-law Luby Jimenez-Curry, 38.
"I love her -- she's like my sister," Jimenez-Curry said. "Besides, it just hair. It's superficial."
The surprise came when Orta's stepdaughter, Natalie Orta, 20, decided on the spot to cut off her own hair. "I have zero words. This is so unexpected," Zahralban said. To see more of The Miami Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.herald.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Miami Herald Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, The Miami Herald