She received her cancer diagnosis during a council meeting. Here is her update
Three months after learning of her diagnosis with breast cancer, Pierce County Council member Robyn Denson says her prognosis is looking up following her completion of radiation therapy.
The council member representing communities in the Gig Harbor area, Key Peninsula, Fox Island, Ruston and parts of north and west Tacoma told constituents in her newsletter that she received the diagnosis during the May 6 County Council meeting.
After 20 sessions of radiation treatment at Tacoma Valley Radiation Oncology, not far from the Pierce County Council offices in downtown Tacoma, Denson said they went “as best as they could have gone.” The results of her lumpectomy indicate the cancer wasn’t invasive, she said.
She slipped in appointments right before work or during the day, and finished her treatments in July. She will have frequent checkups moving forward and will be working with an oncologist, she said.
Denson said she struggled with whether to share about her health publicly, but ultimately decided to do so because she felt that she had a responsibility to use her platform to convey an important message: Stay on track with your regularly-scheduled health screenings.
‘A lot of tears’
So far, the biggest challenge of her cancer has been the emotional impact, she said. The council member has two teens, and said the experience made her think about her kids.
“You think about your own mortality, and I mean, you just don’t want to be facing cancer,” Denson said. “It’s such a scary, scary word ... So there was a lot of tears.”
Denson took a week off work following her lumpectomy surgery, but she continued checking her email during that time and keeping up with constituent work from home, she said. She credits her assistant, Nicole Jones-Vogel, with helping her office keep up in her absence.
“She was monitoring my email during that one week where I wasn’t as available after surgery, so people still got responses,” Denson said. “I don’t think we lost any time at all.”
Asked if going through this experience has deepened her understanding of the local healthcare system, Denson said she was very grateful to have insurance.
A coordinating nurse from Kaiser Permanente called her and helped her set up several initial appointments, Denson said. It was “amazing” having just one point of contact, and she felt that “they really took this seriously and helped (her) navigate it.”
She also imagines it would be hard if she had a job where it was difficult to accommodate the number of appointments she had to schedule for radiation treatments.
“I was lucky, because a lot of (appointments) are open early so I’d be there at 7:30, 7:45,” Denson said. “Radiation is pretty quick so I was able to do that without it impacting my work day for the most part.”
She encouraged people to call their insurance companies and learn what preventative services they might be due for or when they’re due for them, as well as to encourage their friends, spouses and partners to stay up to date. She schedules these appointments in her calendar now, she said.
The council member has remained active in the community. She hosted two town halls in July that were planned at the beginning of the year, one in Gig Harbor and one on the Key Peninsula, where she spoke with residents about issues including emergency preparedness, development regulations, public safety and impacts from federal funding cuts, she recalled.
She also participated in the Key Peninsula’s annual National Night Out event Aug. 5, which is part of a national campaign to promote relationships between residents and law enforcement through community events, block parties and other festivities.
Encouraging women to get regular screenings
Denson said she had delayed her mammogram, an X-ray that can be used to screen for breast cancer, due to her busy schedule.
“ ... it’s so important to be on time with with your mammograms or any other screening, because I was overdue,” she said. “And I was really glad that my insurance company sent a letter, which they’ve had to do in the past ... and if I hadn’t, who knows how things would have progressed?”
Denson said she’s heard from “quite a few women” who said they were overdue for their screenings, since sharing her message publicly.
“That’s all I wanted to accomplish,” Denson said.
Weston King, a Fox Island resident and president of the FICRA Building Trust, reached out to Denson after hearing about her health and said he’d like to initiate a health fair to provide information to the community and encourage them to get health screenings. Incidentally, another person, Jerry Krug, reached out to Denson with a similar idea, and she connected them, Denson told The News Tribune.
King said they’re envisioning an event where subject matter experts share information about topics like cancer or how to eat a healthy diet, and where visitors can pick up swag and get a test done right there or schedule an appointment for a test, free of charge. He said he’s hoping the fair will happen in January, when people are thinking about their New Year’s resolutions.
He described Denson as a model for others who are also juggling many responsibilities, to ensure they also take care of themselves.
“When you are in a leadership role, when you are juggling a lot of things, when you are the mom of a family, when you’re a dad juggling all the things too, you become last priority, and that’s what happens,” King said. “Next thing you know, you’re six months deep into something that you should have been able to catch.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
