Here are their stories. “There’s not an instruction manual to being the daughter of someone who’s ill,” says Audrey. “It is terrifying to have a parent who is sick in the way my mother is. I sometimes feel very angry that someone like my mother…has had to have this kind of experience.” But the diagnosis never stopped Lisa from attending all her children’s baseball games and dance recitals. “I wanted to give [my children] everything that I had, to give them the best start in life,” she says. “I couldn’t let the cancer stop me from doing those things,” Lisa continues. “That was what was important to me.” Rather than hide breast cancer from her children, Lisa chose to tell them about her illness. “I felt like it was necessary for them to know,” she says, “[but] I do worry that my openness has caused them to be fearful.” Audrey, for her part, has had to wrestle with some fears — the thought of losing her mother at a young age and the idea of her own mortality and risk of breast cancer — but her mother’s strength and love has taught her some valuable lessons, too. “One of the most important things that my mom taught me — which will stay with me for the rest of my life — is that no matter how bad the situation is, life doesn’t stop,” says Audrey. “That never stopped her from being the mother that I knew that she was, that she is, that she continues to be.” “That’s devastating for any parent to hear,” Lisa says. Her first thought was, “‘Oh my goodness, I might not live to see [my children] grow up.’” To treat the cancer, Lisa had a bilateral mastectomy, a type surgery to remove both breasts to treat or prevent breast cancer. At first, the procedure appeared to have worked. Five years passed, during which Lisa said she’d started “to feel less fearful.” But that changed in 2009, when she learned that she had stage 1 cancer (meaning, it hadn’t spread to other areas of the body). “It’s like this dark cloud hanging over your head,” says Lisa. “You know you can be hit with this again at any time.” Then, in 2013, Lisa discovered a lump underneath her clavicle while watching television with her daughter. Assuming it was stage 3 cancer, she was determined to start radiation or other treatment available — anything she had to do to “knock this out.” Her doctor, however, told her that the cancer had spread beyond her chest, to both of her lungs. “I thought it was the end,” Lisa says. “[Stage] 1 and 2 brings so much more hope than stage 4. Stage 4 feels hopeless sometimes.” Medications aren’t able to cure metastatic breast cancer, but they can extend a person’s lifespan. After the treatments started working, Lisa says that she became more comfortable with her disease — and even more accepting of her mortality. “I started thinking in terms of months instead of weeks,” she says, and even to plan ahead to future holidays. “You really start to have hope, and that takes over all of the fear.” For three weeks, Stephanie — who is just one of many Black women with metastatic breast cancer living in communities that are underserved medically — spent eight hours a day searching for financial resources that could help her offset the costs of her cancer treatments, which cost about $16,000 a month. Stephanie says, “I went to my cancer center and said, ‘look, I ain’t got a job, and I want to live. What can you do to help?’” Her hard work paid off. Help arrived, and Stephanie finished her cancer treatments without paying much at all. “If I had not advocated for myself, we probably would have lost our house,” she says. “I would have been more destitute than I was.” Stephanie also began attending conferences for metastatic breast cancer — and discovered that she wasn’t alone. “I’ve seen more Black women with metastatic breast cancer than I ever could have imagined existed, and they were walking and talking and living life just like I was,” she says. “I have a community now that I can go to with my problems or my concerns. “And that,” she continues, “is where I learned that Black women with metastatic breast cancer aren’t afforded the same things that white women have access to, and it is a disadvantage.” Now, Stephanie is the lead person in a project that connects Black men and women to clinical trials. “Research is going to keep people alive,” she says. A wife, mother, and grandmother, Stephanie is the “anchor of the family,” says her husband of 20 years, John. “She’s somebody who always has a broom or a mop at the ready.” Stephanie, for her part, has embraced this role. A natural caregiver, Stephanie would much rather walk the dog, do the laundry, or clean the house than sit on the couch. “Putting yourself first, for a woman, is hard,” says Stephanie. “We’re the ones who are nurturers. We fix things. We make it better. And God, Black women — hell, I should be able to bench press a Buick right now. We’re supposed to be strong all the time and put ourselves last.” Even after being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, Stephanie puts a smile on her face, even on her bad days: “I ‘fake it to make it,’ as we say in the cancer world.” But now, Stephanie is starting to realize that it’s okay to lean on others sometimes — and that it’s okay to ask for help when she needs it. Her husband, she says, is a sounding board, a person she can confide in. He’s also teaching her how to relax, to sit in a recliner with a remote and leave the chores for another time. “I’ve always thought my family will come first, but with metastatic breast cancer, it is difficult now,” she says. “At 62 years old, I’m finally learning I can put myself first. A late learner I am, but I’m learning.”
