When Zenda Medeiros received her breast cancer diagnosis six years ago, she remembers the rush of tears that came to her in the doctor's office, the four shots of sambuca she had when she got home, and the two hours of crying before she received a call from the Cross Cancer Institute.
Medeiros wasn't prepared for her diagnosis; cancer didn't run in the family, and although she found her own lump, she thought it was a cyst like the one she had two years prior.
“Cancer isn’t prevalent in my family so I was the first one to get it, and nobody really knew what to expect," Medeiros said. "I thought ‘this is it, I’m dying'."
In September 2016, she was told she had stage one breast cancer, meaning the cancerous tumour was less than two centimetres. However, Medeiros had grade three cancer cells, which spread and grow aggressively compared to lower grade cancer cells.
She underwent a lumpectomy on Oct. 5, 2016, and in December she began four rounds of chemotherapy, followed by 30 radiation sessions. On April 27, 2017, Medeiros finished her last round of radiation, and her cancer was treated successfully.
What the time frame of Medeiros' experience with breast cancer doesn't show is the emotional healing she was able to have because of the support of her friends and family, including husband Frank, sons Deen and Ryan, her four sisters, and two parents. At the time she was diagnosed, Deen was 19, and Ryan was 17.
"I kept it really light when I told my kids,” she said. "Everything we did with cancer, if we didn’t laugh about it, we would cry about it."
“The first little bit, you just kind of cry behind closed doors because you don’t want your kids to get upset and worry.”
Medeiros explained that not long after her first chemotherapy treatment, she began losing her hair.
"There were globs of hair all over the house," she said. "We would just laugh about it."
"When Deen came over to shave my head, both my boys were there with me in the bathroom, and we picked a song that would be fun to shave my head to [and] we picked [Eye of the Tiger by Survivor]. We put that on and blasted it and shaved my head – we had to have fun doing it."
A common experience and side effect of undergoing chemotherapy and radiation is fatigue, as well as nausea, insomnia, and more. While Medeiros said she had days when the fatigue kept her in bed, her mood stayed positive.
“My mood was really good because for me mentally, the biggest thing to get me through was the support of my family and friends," she said. “My mom and dad, all four of my sisters, and my closest girlfriends, they were just always there for me whether it was knitting me homemade toques, (or) coming by with a coffee and visiting, they were just always there for me.”
Medeiros explained that she also enlisted a holistic health practitioner, who advised a schedule of supplements to take, "and he prepared my body for before, during, and after chemotherapy," she said. "With this holistic therapy, I honestly did really well through my chemotherapy and radiation."
Mederios' advice to others recently diagnosed with breast cancer, or currently going through treatment, is to let family and friends in to give support.
"Make sure you have lots of family support, (and) friends support, because that was the biggest thing for me,” she said. “I think it’s important to let those people in, let them help you, let them be there for you, because that’s what’s going to get you through to the end."
"They want to be a part of the process.”
