Braintree woman to walk the runway for breast cancer after being diagnosed during pregnancy
BRAINTREE - Michelle Maloney of Braintree was shocked when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She found out on the same day that she was pregnant.
"We weren't going to have kids" at first, she said of the first eight years of marriage with her husband, Jim. "Just kind of living our best lives, you know? A couple with no expenses besides, obviously, the place that we were living in, which was fantastic. Pretty chill. We worked a lot; we traveled; we love to go to the Berkshires."
A lump that came from "nowhere"
Then, one morning, Michelle woke up with a lump "that came from what seemed like nowhere," she said.
She went to the doctor and received a full spectrum of medical news. When she came home, she told Jim, "What I'm about to tell you is going to change the course of our lives. My words were 'I'm pregnant, and I think I have breast cancer.'"
Maloney was pleasantly surprised to learn that she could keep her pregnancy while undergoing a mastectomy and chemotherapy, and soon, their son Matthew was brought into this world.
After another round of more aggressive treatment, Michelle's scans showed clear margins. She lived with clear scans for nearly a decade.
Discovering Stage IV cancer
Then, in March 2022 everything changed. "I was coughing and up all night, and I couldn't sleep, and I thought it was allergies. It was the springtime. I thought it was a cold. I honestly never thought it was anything else," she said.
But it was metastatic Stage IV breast cancer. "[It was] devastating," Michelle explained. "It was so hard to say the words. I was so scared."
Michelle was stable with her treatment until this past September when her nodules increased. She just signed up for a clinical trial at Dana Farber.
She says she knew that "at some point, the drugs wouldn't work and we would need to move to something else," but it was still tough news.
"I know that I'm going to be treating this forever. I know I'm not going to be on the same drug forever. I know we're going to need to change, but then, it's like you're reliving the diagnosis all over again when you hear the words 'It's not stable anymore.'"
Runway for Recovery steps in
To accommodate her changing energy levels and lifestyle, Michelle now works part-time at a nearby church. She focuses her time on cancer-related charity work, her son Matthew, and living life as her husband Jim "drives the bus," she jokes.
Living life to the fullest has been possible for the Maloney family, in part, because of Runway for Recovery.
The Massachusetts organization was founded by Olivia Boger, originally from Concord, as a tribute to her mother, Candy Achtmeyer, who died in 2001 after a 10-year battle with breast cancer that she fought completely in private.
"There wasn't an ounce of us that was mad [she didn't tell us] because it was just such an overwhelming maternal sacrifice that we acknowledge had occurred," Boger said. "There was such a grace about my mom, and you know, a desire to always deflect and have the attention not on her."
Boger first held a "Runway" fashion show in 2007, in Concord, with 75 guests. She raised about $13,000 for families fighting breast cancer that year, but she knew, based on the energy in the room, that this would be a lifelong mission.
Now, 17 years later, with an office in Newburyport, Runway for Recovery is an annual event. Their Boston fashion show this year will have 100 models walking the stage, 900 guests in the audience, and will raise more than $500,000 in one night. The organization has also launched fashion shows in New York and Southern California.
When asked what her mother Candy would think of the growth, Olivia said, "She really believed in a magic in childhood. I think she just saw the purity of it, and I think anything that we're doing to give other kids that magic would be meaningful."
Annual fashion show
That's where the money goes: not directly to cancer or research but to the magic of childhood.
Families who have lost a parent to breast cancer or who have a parent actively fighting Stage IV breast cancer can apply for a grant from Runway for Recovery to be used for groceries, tutoring, extracurricular activities, summer camp, therapy, and more. "The things that allow children to be children, that allow the parents to not have to worry about finances," Boger said.
Then, the mothers and fathers who are survivors or relatives of someone with breast cancer walk the runway dressed by Massachusetts stores. This year, the fashion show takes place on October 25.
Michelle Maloney will walk in the fashion show this year. "I was like, 'Sure, why not?!'" she joked. "I'm reinventing my life. This is beautiful."
The Maloneys are a grant family for Runway. The money they receive each month has been used for grocery support and extracurriculars for Matthew, who is a beautiful singer and recently joined the South Shore Children's Chorus.
Watching him perform without worrying about finances is one of the joys Runway for Recovery has brought to the Maloneys' life.
"I'm the one who physically has the cancer, but we are all living with the cancer, right?" Michelle said. "It affects everybody."
She remembers a moment after her son's recorder concert shortly after she received her Stage IV diagnosis that put life in perspective.
"Will I get to see this again?" she thought. "Will I be here next year when he does another concert? What is that like? I don't have a lot of those moments because I try not to, but every once in a while, it kind of takes over you. And that was one of those moments where I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm living with this reality.'"
You can see the infectious energy Michelle brings everywhere she goes by the way her husband Jim looks at her. "To me, she's a badass in whatever she does," he told WBZ-TV. "She knocks it out of the park."