SURVIVOR SPOTLIGHT
Amy Padilla:
Part of My Story
By Genevieve Branco
When I heard that Amy Padilla’s breast cancer had been found 15 years ago, when she was only 29 years old, I was shocked. The odds of being diagnosed with breast cancer at age 30 or below is 1 in 204, or .49%. This, coupled with the fact that Amy ate well, exercised, and had no family history of breast cancer, was probably the primary reason that her doctor’s initial response to her breast lump was to do nothing. But thank goodness Amy was a strong advocate for herself and insisted on further testing. Little did she know that the years that would follow would be full of medical challenges – and miracles! Here’s her story.
Amy Padilla had a mom who was a stickler for preventive health care. Her kids got their teeth cleaned every six months and their annual checkups at the doctor weren’t missed. This is why Amy grew up continuing these positive health care habits. Amy also reflects on the breast self-exam hanger that lived in her shower while she grew up, and it’s an interesting part of her story to note that she gave herself monthly self-breast exams in the shower throughout her teens and twenties. So, when she found a hard bump under her armpit in her right breast at 29 years old, she knew it was not supposed to be there. She went in for her normal, annual pap smear appointment – again, a positive health habit she learned from her mom – and she was able to tell the doctor what she found. At first, the doctor did not think they should do anything with the lump. The odds were that it was nothing. She was young, healthy, ate well, exercised, and had no family history of breast cancer. There was nothing in her genetics or her lifestyle that would cause concern for breast cancer. The doctor suggested that they check it in six months and see how it was doing. But Amy was a brave advocate for herself and asked for further testing immediately. That led to a “suspicious” mammogram and then a radiologist doing a needle biopsy.
When she got the news that she had stage 3 breast cancer she was shocked and tearful. Her mom was with her for the office appointment. Immediately, Amy had to draw on her faith. She told herself that this was not in her hands and did everything she could to trust in God. When she had to choose her oncologist, she did it by asking the doctor one simple question – who would you send your daughter to if she had breast cancer?
Thus began the next part of her story – the treatment for breast cancer. Those of you who have experienced treatment for breast cancer know that it’s a fast and yet very slow journey of treatment and healing. The time from her diagnosis to when she saw the surgeon for the first time was fast. She opted for a bilateral mastectomy, and when she underwent the surgery, they did find that the cancer was in her lymph nodes as well. In June, near the time of her surgery, she had her 30th birthday.
She learned that her breast cancer was triple-negative breast cancer, which an aggressive breast cancer that needs to be treated early and aggressively. Originally, her oncologist planned 12 chemotherapy treatments over several slow months. But Amy had such a weakened immune system that she contracted a virus that attacked her heart, sending her into emergency congestive heart failure after only 8 sessions – another medical challenge that is uncommon. She began seeing a cardiologist and attention shifted to this new life-threatening illness. She was told her ejection fraction was only 17- anything below 40 can mean your heart is failing. She started on medication to cure the virus and her heart failure subsided, but she recalls that it took an entire year to fully recover from the congestive heart failure.
Meanwhile, back to the part of her story about breast cancer… well, while her chemo treatments stopped at eight, her other treatments resumed. She started radiation six months after she stopped her chemotherapy and had flap reconstruction surgery. For her, radiation was worse than chemotherapy, which is sometimes the case. She had so much burning that the doctors stopped her radiation short as well, 20 days after it began.
It was some time after that – after she healed from the cancer and the congestive heart failure, that Amy really started to feel like she was renewing her life. She focused on the “new her” – a new part of her life and the next part of her story. She attended a lot of support groups and worked back to being able to exercise. She started weightlifting and doing 5k runs for her heart health with her sister and family. Then came the next part of her story – her son.
Amy’s miracle baby, her son Alexander, was the blessing that she was not expecting. She hadn’t even completed her last reconstruction surgery when she got the news of her pregnancy and had to pause – well, to make life! It wasn’t an easy pregnancy for Amy because she suffered from congestive heart failure again, which put her in a very high-risk category of pregnancy. This is part of why she really sees Alexander as her miracle baby. She was advised by her doctors that this should be her only pregnancy, but Alexander was enough for her. A mother’s pride beamed out of her as she talked about Alexander – how he was advanced in reading, math, and music, and was just the perfect gift in her life. And just as she is proud of him, she can tell that he is proud of her, too. He knows that he is the best part of his mom’s story, and her survival is woven in the fabric of who they both are.
Faith is the thing that got Amy through these incredible years. She had the closest relationship with God when she needed Him the most. Obviously, family has been an enormous support as well. And her Links for Life sisters were so supportive throughout her journey and still are today, 15 years later. She talks about the many sisters who have fought cancer and survived, and how they are an inspiration to others. And she talks about losing survivors as well, as they go through survivorship together, sometimes going to funerals, doing runs in their honor, wearing pins to remember and honor those who have passed. Amy is actively involved in Links for Life now as a mentor to new diagnosed, and she attends the social events that Links puts on such as lunches and dinners, always remembering to connect through survivorship and pay forward her incredible experience.
When asked what advise she would give to newly diagnosed Amy said that she would encourage them to embrace their emotions but know that you’re going to get to the other side. She said, you’re going to go through it, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, but it’s up to you how you’re going to go through it.
Amy obviously walks in gratitude and faith, in everything she does. She tries to promote advocacy and she herself is a pillar of strength. Self-pity is not something that Amy wallows in, and in fact she is actually grateful for the many people she has been blessed to know during this process and the relationships she has built over the years. Today, she sees every day as a new day in her new life. This is the person she has become, and she knows that the story of her life is still being written – and while she doesn’t want breast cancer to be all of her story, she embraces the part of her story that it was and looks forward to seeing what the future holds in her next chapters.
