Breast Cancer Survivor Julia L. Blum's Story

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we asked Patch readers to share their breast cancer journeys on Patch. This is Julia L Blum's story:

In 1968, when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 46 and given a prognosis of only a few months survival, the word "breast" and "cancer" were rarely, if ever, spoken. Barely audible as these words were at the time, the implication they had together was clear— so much so, that I can still remember the first time I did not hear them. That time was the day of my mother’s surgery, and it began as most every summer day did in the tranquil Long Island suburb where I grew up. As a shy 8-year-old tomboy with perpetual grass stains on my knees, I ran up the stairs of our split-level to my bedroom. The phone rang and my grandmother answered it in the kitchen. My father was on the other end of the line. There was a moment of complete silence and then my grandmother began to weep unrestrained.

As I listened to her through the slightly opened crack of my door, I tried to make sense of what she was saying. Then she abandoned her English and spoke to my father in Italian. That’s when I realized something was really wrong. After my grandmother hung up the phone, she took out the worn, black prayer book that she kept in her apron pocket and sat down in a dimly lit corner. As she rocked the chair, she quietly read from the book while absorbing the shock of learning that her daughter-in-law was terminally ill with only months to live.

But my mother had other plans. With three young children to raise, she returned home determined to see her two boys into adulthood, and her youngest and only daughter graduate from college. Defying the odds stacked against her, she lived for 12 more years, through Cobalt treatments, hospital stays and a multitude of operations that constantly tested her spirit and resilience. Later as a patient of pioneering physician Dr. Min Chiu Li, my mother became one of the very first recipients of a ground-breaking cancer treatment, chemotherapy.

Yet, breast cancer was still barely mentioned and there were no support groups or hotlines to call at two o’clock in the morning, or pink ribbons — not just yet. To this day, I wonder how lonely it must have been for my mother to confront this disease in such a solitary place. Yet she remained steadfast in her fight to live and during her 12 years of survivorship, I as daughter and caregiver, learned more about life through my mother’s driven certainty to live, rather than her resigning to exist with the certainty of dying. One of her biggest concerns was that her sickness would hold me back and steal away my youth. She’d say, “Go out and have fun. This is your time.” But the years passed and while my mother’s battle with breast cancer took away a good part of my youth, it shaped my perspective and gave me a lifetime appreciation of what was essential, real and honorable.

In the spring of 1981, my mother was 58, and I, a soon-to-be college graduate, when discussion about breast cancer was starting to be heard. My mother had achieved her wish to see her children into adulthood and now her battle with breast cancer was approaching its end. Admitted to the hospital one final time, I commuted each Thursday by bus from my upstate college campus to be by my mother’s bedside each weekend until the following Monday at what was then Nassau Hospital in Minneola.

Two weeks before her passing, as I looked out the bedside window at the now familiar landscape, my mother took on a serious tone as we talked openly about breast cancer in the hospital room. She told me not live my life in fear of it, asserting that I always remain mindful of my physical well-being and to go for routine exams and screenings when the appropriate time came. “If something’s not right, don’t ignore it and do nothing, hoping it will go away,” she asserted. She then compelled me to verbally promise that I would go for regular exams and screenings when the time was appropriate. It was a promise that ultimately saved my life.

By 1994, I was married and had two daughters of my own and went for my first baseline mammogram at 35. Breast cancer was growing more prevalent and pink ribbons began to appear on posters, in doctor’s offices and at check out counters. My then 6 year-old daughters learned early on about what they signified, along with light-hearted stories about their grandmother. After age 40, I went for annual screenings, most of which went well and a couple that required a "second look" and ultimately proved benign. In late November 2009, at age 50, my mammogram looked clear, but the ultrasound picked up something suspicious. After a subsequent biopsy my radiologist phoned me directly with the results saying,

“Julia, it is something."

“It is something?” I responded.

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

It is now nearly nine years past that conversation. My breast cancer was detected early and surgically removed, but it was an aggressive, highly recurrent type and one that needed to be treated as such. Thus, the year 2010, the one that I prefer to forget, was comprised of undergoing all the rigorous treatments that I was a candidate for and that I successfully completed through all four seasons of that year. Nine years since, and just a couple of weeks shy of my 59th birthday, I reflect on those challenging days at Sloan, lying down on a recliner in a corner nook on the second floor by a large window, swaddled in a warmed blanket.

In the midst of my year-long treatments, I began to write the preface of this story, receiving therapies undiscovered and unavailable to women such as I only ten or so years prior to that time. As the IV flowed, I would look out the window beside me, admiring the pale and brilliant colors of the changing seasons, marveling about how far we have come through awareness, research, modern medicine, and discussion. There lies the hope of the days and years to come with the thought of living for the day — and the bond between mother and daughter. It has been a long road, but I'm a survivor, and although I no longer have grass stains on my knees, I know how to get down and fight. I learned how from my mother.

—Julia L. Blum

See more stories from other breast cancer survivors, fighters and supporters, here.

To learn more about breast cancer or how you can help, please visit The National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Image Credit: Julia L. Blum