What’s Tirza’s Backstory?
I am often asked, “how did you get here?”
First and foremost, I was called to duty. Being of service to others provides ultimate gratification to me.
After serving as a medical lab tech with the Army and completing a B.S. in Industrial Engineering in the 1980s, I obtained a master’s degree in the Management of Technology in the 1990s. Working first as a manufacturing engineer and then as an account executive with Proctor & Gamble, I realized the impersonal nature of such a large corporation did not align with my core values. I didn’t know where I would land next, but I knew I had to return to helping people.
Serendipity revealed the way. As I sought safe breast screening, a friend suggested a thermogram. I had never heard of such a thing, but as I called several breast imaging centers in the Denver area, they said, “we don’t do them, but women are asking for them.” I realized that this was God’s/the universe’s way of steering my direction!
In that instant, I knew I had the right background and desire to bring thermography services to the community and launched The Thermogram Center, Inc.
That was 2002.
I quickly learned that across the industry, thermography reports were leaving women feeling frustrated because they didn’t know what to do with the information. That sent me down a path of becoming a preventive health educator, seeking to help men and women learn of the action steps they can take to reduce cancer risk and inflammation to support prevention.
In the process, I learned that the focus of most thermographers is to support breast cancer detection, earlier and more safely than mammography. But such a focus not only puts thermography at odds with mammography, but also negates thermography’s biggest potential: supporting prevention!
No man or woman wants to be diagnosed with cancer, if cancer can be prevented.
Diagnoses lead to treatment costs that serve the bottom line of capitalistic medicine. Prevention serves the highest good of the public (which is why I predict that thermography will not become standard of care until the public demands it.)
With prevention in my mind and heart, I have sought to keep the book, Better Breast Health – for Life!™, first published in 2005 and now in its 3rd edition, continually up-to-date and helping men and women to act on risk factors that may lead to any kind of cancer, not just of the breast. And I have done my best to inspire and empower clients on the prevention path with advanced thermography to monitor the results of their action steps on the inflammation in the body/breasts.
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