Survivor Series

Survivor Series – Meet Patricia Santacroce ‘I drew the short straw on this, but I’m in a really good place right now.’  By ELLYN SANTIAGO In June 2021, still in the grips of the pandemic that had disordered our globe, Patricia Santacroce’s world was “turned upside down.” For the now 53-year-old, the breast cancer diagnosis […]

‘We were all on sinking ships, but rescued in one lifeboat.’ By ELLYN SANTIAGO For nearly 25 years, a group of random women of all ages from across the region, from different professions and backgrounds and different interests, meet up for dinner seven or eight times a year. What they share in common is a

I hope my story can help, even just one person By ELLYN SANTIAGO A few short months after her breast cancer surgery in November 1998, Marie Joly got on a plane with her husband, family, and church friends and flew to Italy for a holiday. Her doctors had given their blessing. Marie and Mike Joly

“Survival is a continual thing …breast cancer doesn’t end when you recover.” By ELLYN SANTIAGO For 47-year-old Christeen Gilman, what was most worrying and agonizing during her breast cancer battle was not how she suffered, and endured, but how it impacted her children. “The hardest part of this cancer journey was by far how it

For survivor Fawn Kleemann, it was the love and support that carried her through. By ELLYN SANTIAGO Breast cancer runs in Fawn Kleemann’s family. On her maternal side, it was her aunts. On her paternal side, her father’s mother, her grandmother, also had breast cancer. “With an extensive family history of breast cancer, I started

By the time her story is published, Mandy-Lyn Crispim will have undergone her sixth surgery. By ELLYN SANTIAGO Mandy Crispim “I didn’t know much about breast cancer before my mom died on October 1st of 2010,” Mandy shared. But after losing her mother, she’d learn. “My brother had her diary. She knew. She wasn’t diagnosed,

“How do you tell your son his party is canceled, and Mommy is going into the hospital? You don’t!” By ELLYN SANTIAGO Not wanting her to check testing results before they had a chance to speak with her first, the radiologist phoned Amy Blewitt. A registered dietitian, board certified in Oncology Nutrition, Amy was at

From the best shape of her life one day to a cancer patient in full-blown treatment the next By ELLYN SANTIAGO Cassie Morrison was 41 in the winter of 2019 and was arguably in the “best shape” of her life. The Westbrook wife and mother, also a ZUMBA instructor and half marathon runner, was copious

Christine Toner’s story is not defined by her diagnosis By ELLYN SANTIAGO It was on a summer day, and her 25th wedding anniversary, that Christine Toner’s physician called and confirmed the diagnosis. “I dropped the phone,” the 55-year-old mother of two, shares. ”It was like a two-by-four hit me straight on the head.” In 2019,

“I walk to keep up hope, keep sharing our community’s passion that someday there’ll be a cure.”  By ELLYN SANTIAGO Minerva Sadorra’s breast cancer journey story is at once heart-wrenching and heart-warming.  Thirteen years after being first diagnosed, she goes “back in time”, a difficult place to go, to share her story with TBBCF: “Hopefully,