A Survivor's Story

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Amie Slott
October 27, 2023

On November 6, 2015, a Friday, the day before my son’s 4th birthday, I was told I had breast cancer.

My husband and I sat in the room staring at the table for what seemed like an eternity before asking our nurse navigator to come back into the room. We talked through next steps and she helped prepare me for the whirlwind to follow. Saturday was my son’s birthday and we had a party to host, kids to love, life to live. We plowed through to Sunday afternoon when all the presents had been unwrapped and out-of-town guests had gone home and the house was quiet. And for the first time, I let it creep in. We asked the kids to join us in our room, to snuggle in bed and began a conversation I never could have imagined myself having with my four year old son and seven year old daughter. There really was no sugar coating, “mommy has breast cancer”. My husband and I had agreed that we would be as open and honest with them as possible. It was important to us that they not see us whispering and hiding or keeping secrets. My daughter is too smart for that, she would know that there was something we weren’t telling her. My son was too little to have any real idea what those words meant, but my daughter laid in my arms and we wept. It was not the last time we would lay in bed holding each other crying.

The Battle

The following weeks were and still are a blur. Little details come back to me as I look back through old notes and pictures. My official diagnosis was stage 2A triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma. Chemo was a given, twenty weeks, sixteen treatments. Did you know that when you go in for chemo, you plan on being there for about half the day? The first few hours of the infusion are for delivering pre-meds… medications to combat the side effect of the chemo itself, steroids, anti-nausea meds, Benadryl to keep you from having an allergic reaction. My first four treatments were Adriamycin and Cytoxan. They call Adriamycin “The Red Devil” and boy it lives up to its name. There are still foods I can’t eat without feeling queasy, remembering the day I ate them during treatment… and regretted it later. I had asked friends for recommendations for shows to watch on Netflix during treatment. One series I loved and watched each week, but can’t even think about watching now without feeling nauseous. There were many days during those 20 weeks that I was doing my best to get out of bed, take a shower and get right back into bed. Despite it all I continued to work full time. Marc and Sandy, all of MatchCraft, were incredibly supportive and continually suggested that I just take some time off. But keeping my mind occupied was critical to me surviving what were some of the lowest days of my life. I needed the routine, the contact with people, the normality of doing a job I loved and was good at. I also needed my kids to see that I could still be an active participant in their lives. Maybe not the same way I always had, there were many frozen pizzas and week day movie nights, but each night I made a sincere effort to connect with each one of them and of course sing them a bedtime song.

I had about four weeks to heal after chemo before I would undergo a bi-lateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. While I was more than ready to have surgery behind me, the week of surgery was a tough one for both me and my husband. Facing more than eight hours on a surgical table had our anxiety levels at their peak. Just a word of advice, if you ever have a friend or family member who is going to have a mastectomy, please suggest to them that they rent a lift chair. Lying down and getting out of a chair without the use of your arms is considerably more challenging that you would think.

While surgery wasn’t a walk in the park, comparatively it was the easiest of the phases of my treatment plan. About eight weeks after surgery, I started radiation therapy. Twenty eight treatments doesn’t sound like much until you face it. It becomes a tedious reminder of your mental and physical vulnerability. I was burned and broken but in the end I was done and I had Survived. I clearly remember that last day of treatment. I stood outside of the cancer center, my peach fuzz hair blowing in the breeze and felt the sun on my face like I had never felt it before. For the first time in nine months I didn’t have a next treatment. For the first time in nine months, I didn’t have a next step. For the first time in nine months, I exhaled.

Now, when I look back at pictures and memories, I don’t even recognize the person I see in those pictures. Sometimes I look at pictures from before cancer and I don’t recognize that person either. To say that cancer changes you is a gross understatement. I will never be the same person I was before cancer, and if I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t want to be. The person I am now has done it and survived and could do it again if I had to.

Lessons from Cancer

Looking through those memories helped me to realize the lessons I’ve learned along this journey.

1. It sounds cliche, but really it's all about the little things now.

The moments, the hugs, the bedtime stories and songs. My children have always been and always will be my world, but now their smiles are sweeter, their hugs are warmer. I get to be their momma today.

2. Don’t underestimate what you’re capable of.

The human body, and the human spirit is resilient beyond measure. People have used words like courageous and brave to describe me. To be honest, I don’t see myself as either. I see myself as doing the same thing anyone else would do in my shoes… everything you need to do in order to survive. “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”

3. Being brave doesn’t mean that you aren’t afraid, it means being scared to death and doing it anyway.

To quote Mark Twain “Courage is the resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear”. That’s probably the biggest lesson I want my children to take away from this and is at the core of why I needed to be as open with them as possible. I needed them to see that its ok to be scared, terrified, but not to let that fear paralyze you and keep you from doing what needs to be done.

4. Don’t put it off to another day.

I’m not talking about laundry, or dishes, or another email. I mean the things you really want to do. When I was in college I had an opportunity to study in France. It was the most amazing experience of my life up to that point. I promised myself I would go back and when my daughter was born, I promised myself I would be by her side for her first taste of a crepe from a stand on the Champs Elysee. And then life, and work and school and homework and and and…. And then cancer. As I was going through treatment, it made me sad to think about not getting to show my kids the world, to never see another country again. So on Christmas Eve 2017, two years after diagnosis, my husband, kids and I landed at Charles de Gaule and spent Christmas morning at the top of the Eiffel Tower. We strolled the Champs Elysee and ate crepe from a stand, drank cafe au lait, stood amazed at the site of the Mona Lisa. We took a train to Brussels and saw the towns where my husband’s great great grand parents immigrated from. My son’s favorite part? Drinking beer in Belgium. My kids got to see the world and I got to experience a world I love through the eyes of my children.

5. The final lesson I want to leave you with is that no one understands your journey like a fellow Survivor.

One of the greatest blessings to come out of the last two and a half years has been the chance to meet and befriend so many amazing women. About half way through chemo, I was invited to a small group meeting at Komen with someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy. I sat at a table with other women at various stages of their surviorship and I was struck by how “unbroken” they all were. For the first time, I felt hope. We talked and laughed and I remember thinking how “un cancer patient” they all were. And for the first time, I felt hope. I didn’t know it until then, but I needed to see other women who had survived their battle. I needed to see that the broken, fragile, frightened person I was standing in that room could come out the other side. “If they could do it, so could I.”

And that is why I share my story, for the future Survivors who need to see it can be done.

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