NEWPORT BEACH : Nancy Reagan Tells of Cancer Episode

There were, to be sure, glimpses of the strong, independent-minded woman who liked to take jabs at the Washington establishment during her tumultuous eight years in the White House.

But by and large, it was a different and seemingly more vulnerable side of Nancy Reagan that was on display before some 560 supportive women in Newport Beach on Wednesday as the former First Lady shared her experience with cancer.

“I felt my stomach start to tighten,” Mrs. Reagan said, relating the day in 1985 when the doctor closed the examination room door to tell her the results of a routine mammogram.

“I knew--I could feel the bad news coming, and there was no way to stop it,” she said. “I thought--’Ronnie, what would he do?’ ”

After her speech at the Four Seasons Hotel, Mrs. Reagan went to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach to meet with more than two dozen cancer patients. She received some flowers, looked at a few scrapbooks and, for the most part, listened to the stories of the patients.

But at a morning brunch organized by the Circle 1000 Club, an association of Orange County women that is raising funds for the soon-to-open, $22-million Hoag Cancer Center, it was Mrs. Reagan doing most of the talking. Met with a standing ovation, Mrs. Reagan said that after learning of her breast cancer, she rejected the option of a lumpectomy--to remove only the cancerous tissue itself--and instead decided on a radical mastectomy to remove the left breast.

It was a decision that prompted some public criticism from medical professionals and others in Washington at the time, and Mrs. Reagan said that stung.

“What right did they have to tell me I’d made the wrong decision?” she asked.

She defended her decision, saying: “I wasn’t 20 years old, I’d been married for 38 years and I’d had my children, and (the radical mastectomy) seemed the best,” she said. “Besides, I’m not Dolly Parton.”

Perhaps the most emotional part of the event came when Mrs. Reagan, appearing near tears, talked about the death of her mother just days after her own operation.

“Even though she didn’t know me at the end, I still needed her a lot,” Mrs. Reagan said. “I really had no time to recover from the operation or to grieve for my mother, whom I loved dearly.”

Mrs. Reagan, who appeared without a fee, did not take questions from the media, but she did field friendly inquiries from those at the brunch.

Circle 1000 chairman Sandy Sewell of Newport Beach said later: “At many times, she seems on the defensive in public and in the media, but I think today she let her guard down and showed her human side. . . . She seemed very warm and caring.