Survivor Story

In my nearly 42 years on this earth, it’s only recently that I’ve truly appreciated what it means to pay it forward. I’ve learned that you can help so many people by just sharing a personal experience, holding their hand through a rough time and saying “yes, I’ve been there too and we’ll fight through it.”

This year marks my 12 years as a breast cancer survivor and, with each anniversary that has me cancer free, it becomes easier to close that chapter and begin new ones.

I was diagnosed in October of 1997 shortly after my one year wedding anniversary. We were living outside of Boston and were in Nantucket on a weekend when I first felt a lump in my left breast. 

It wasn’t easy to get a mammogram. They didn’t let 30-year-old women just go get them. I had to go to my primary care doctor, get a referral and then wait. It was only a few days, but it felt like weeks before I could get an appointment.  Thirty-year old women also have very dense breasts, so even though I could feel something tangible, nothing came up on the mammogram. I needed an ultrasound and that’s when the radiologist said I’d need a biopsy and that I should probably contact a surgeon.

As it turned out, the lump I felt was not cancerous – it was a fibroid adenoma: a little harmless nodule. The bad news was that during the biopsy there was a large area that looked “questionable.”  My surgeon said if it hadn’t been for my long and “nasty” family history of breast cancer, she probably wouldn’t have looked any further. But she did. It was ductal carcinoma in situ. She said treatment options included mastectomy or lumpectomy and radiation.

I did a lot of research about DCIS, back then without the help of the Internet! My dilemma – lumpectomy or a radical double mastectomy? After all, my mom and sister had breast cancer and my dad died of it 7 years earlier as did my aunt many years before. But I just couldn’t see lopping off a perfectly healthy breast if we could nip the cancerous one in the bud with radiation.

By December, my first lumpectomy was done, but, without a clean margin, my surgeon wanted to go back in and this time take lymph nodes too. My nodes were clear and my doctor got the clean margin. Recuperating was a bit painful – mostly due to the horrible contraption I had to drain the lymphatic fluid from my armpit. My husband had to help me suction out this disgusting fluid as it was too awkward a maneuver for me to do on my own. After the seven weeks of radiation treatments were over, I felt tired and as if I’d spent too much time on a topless beach.

While cancer has changed me, there have also been so many joys in my life as well – a move back to my home state of Connecticut, my two beautiful kids ages 7 and 3 and my loving husband who stuck by me when things were rough.

In the years since my diagnosis, I have had a few incidents where small lumps in the other breast drew enough attention from new surgeons to warrant biopsies. Just more fibroids. I have my mammograms as well as an ultrasound annually – an event I still meet with a fluttering of nerves. I recently underwent BRCA genetic testing. I am negative, though I am not resting on my laurels for the sake of my children.

Once I hit the 10 year mark, I decided it was time to take action and start doing something. I am committed to raising money for and participating in marathon breast cancer walks and awareness events. And, most recently, I began a local chapter of the Pink Ribbon Club, a national club aimed at bringing highschoolers into the fight against breast cancer.

I am very happy in my role as mother, wife, survivor, breast cancer crusader.

Maria Duncan, 42, is a freelance writer from Woodbury, Connecticut.