Woman fighting breast cancer: "I only thought about my husband and my children"

Created: 02/12/2022, 02:00 p.m

By: Barbara Schlotterer-Fuchs

Marilena continues on her way - with an iron will she won the fight against cancer.

© Barbara Schlotterer-Fuchs

World Cancer Day.

courage week.

A fitting story that touches and encourages.

The story of a strong-willed woman who defied cancer.

Peiting – It's a sunny winter's day.

Marilena (name changed by the editors) walks towards the light on a path.

A new way.

A year ago, her life turned upside down.

diagnosis of breast cancer.

breast cancer.

"As big as a pomegranate." The cancer has only spread slightly.

The lymph is affected.

For Marilena, a long journey begins on this day that will change her life and shape her forever.

Today we want to tell her story.

To get straight to the point: Marilena would like to remain anonymous.

Not because she's embarrassed about anything.

why?

"It can happen to anyone." She doesn't want to be recognized because she doesn't want pity.

Many do not even know about their illness today.

In May 2021 she received the bitter diagnosis

It's May 2021. There's something in your chest that definitely doesn't belong there.

Marilena's gynecologist sends his patient, whose two children he has already given birth, to the specialist clinic.

A little later a call: "It doesn't look good."

Marilena is supposed to come to the gynecologist's office with her husband after the consultation.

"I've known subconsciously for a long time what's going on," says Marilena.

The dark foreboding is about to come true.

it's cancer

Definitive.

The doctor knows his patient.

"If anyone can do it, it's you," he encourages.

"My husband was white as cheese.

I said to the doctor: we can handle it!”

What follows is a difficult process: Marilena has to endure painful procedures for two weeks.

Your entire body will be checked by experts.

Brain.

Organs.

Bone.

It goes from one appointment to the next.

Fear becomes a constant companion.

In a women's clinic in Munich, the first of many breakdowns occurs that will follow.

"I was walking down a hallway in the cancer ward, where I was met by women without hair, without eyebrows, pale in the face." Marilena runs out of the clinic, tears open the car door and bursts into tears in the passenger seat next to her husband yells: "They all look like they have cancer!" The cancer has finally arrived in the consciousness of the 44-year-olds.

The four hardest months of her life follow

Even if the cancer hasn't taken hold of her body any further at this point in time and hasn't spread further, the doctors are not very hopeful.

After all, Marilena with only one kidney is a high-risk patient anyway – the fact that the drama is happening in the middle of a pandemic doesn't make things any easier.

Marilena is strong.

“I was only thinking about my husband and my children.

I wasn't afraid for myself, but that I would leave her alone.

Others fall into a hole and are completely exhausted.” With Marilena it was the other way around: she had to support her husband and two sons (16 and 21).

"I had to be strong for others." From now on there should be a new motto in her life.

"This will be my fight.

That's what I had in mind."

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Schongau newsletter.)

The four most difficult months of her life follow: Four months of chemo: That's 120 days of suffering.

"I got a really bad chemo every Friday in Weilheim." By the time she has recovered to some extent, the next chemo is due.

"I only lived from one chemo to the next." After the first chemo, Marilena wants to die.

It doesn't take long for Marilena to start losing her hair in clumps.

She will never forget the day when her husband grabbed the scissors and razor and shaved off her hair, which was longer than her shoulders.

The shiny hair falls in tufts onto the bare kitchen floor.

It remains a bald head.

Husband and son have tears in their eyes.

Marilena thinks about the wig that is currently being made in Munich.

Looking back, she hardly ever wore them.

She drapes cloths around her bald head.

She doesn't care what people think.

"Nobody has to be ashamed of it, nobody chooses such an illness."

The side effects of chemotherapy are bad

Anyone who hasn't experienced it firsthand, in their own family, knows anything about life with chemotherapy?

"Everyone knows that you lose hair." Marilena didn't know that her fingernails and toenails would practically fall out.

Incredible nerve pain.

"Actually, I didn't know anything at first." The mouth and jaw are often so swollen that swallowing and eating become impossible.

For the first few weeks, Marilena doesn't even want to wash.

"I couldn't make it from the couch to the bathroom."

How is she supposed to get through this?

Not only once did Marilena think of an end, maybe also of giving up.

"A couple of times I lay there and just prayed, 'Dear God, if I'm going to die, it's going to be now.

I can't take it anymore.'” Because of her family alone, there is no other option but to persevere.

Even when the doctors advise her to interrupt the chemo because her body is no longer cooperating, she says: "No, we'll do it!"

Tumor shrinks to one millimeter: chief physician speaks of a miracle

Four months of endless pain should finally pay off: The giant tumor in the breast has shrunk to one millimeter.

Even the doctors can hardly believe it.

The chief physician in Großhadern speaks of a miracle.

Marilena's breast is removed, rebuilt.

At the moment she is receiving heart-friendly radiation treatments every day, and she will also be doing that in the coming week.

Eyebrows and eyelashes have grown again.

The 44-year-old is proud of that.

Because even if the loss of hair did not cause any physical pain, it did hurt mentally.

"Without eyelashes and eyebrows, the disease becomes obvious to everyone."

Marilena still has a hat draped over her head.

Underneath, however, hair is already sprouting again.

Soon she would like to take off the cloth completely.

However, she will never leave her illness and the bad times behind her.

Even today, everything in the family revolves around the disease

“The illness changes you.

You think differently about life as a whole,” she says.

For the whole family, the diagnosis was a shock that will take a long time to process.

Even today, everything in her family revolves around her illness, she says.

In a way, Marilena gives back in her own way what her family gave her during the difficult times: “The pain and the chemo: I would accept that again at any time if I could just stay with my family.”

To this day, she says, she has not accepted the disease itself.

"It doesn't belong to me," she explains without leaving a doubt, and looks ahead.

Her shoes crunch on a bit of snow that will be gone and forgotten by tomorrow – very different from Marilena's fate.

More current news from the region around Schongau can be found here.