6 Months After Beating Breast Cancer, Area Woman All Smiles
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – When Roxanne Martinez looks back at the most challenging time in her life she actually smiles.
"The past year has been the best year of my life," Martinez, 31, said. "It was through my battle that I strengthened relationships with my family, with friends, with loved ones, with God, and I just have a new appreciation for the smallest blessings in life, and during the past year I received the biggest blessing ever."
Last October, Martinez discovered a lump in her left breast during a self-examination.
"Being October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month and seeing so much pink, I went ahead and made the appointment," she said.
At that appointment, the then 30-year-old woman discovered she was pregnant with her first child. Tests later that week determined the lump in her breast was Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
"I went through so many different emotions and feelings. I think initially it's shock," she said, "Just disbelief that it's actually true, that it could really be happening, all of it, all at once."
In her fourteenth week of pregnancy, Martinez had a left mastectomy. At 20 weeks, she started chemotherapy.
"We did her chemotherapy during her pregnancy, which is safe, because she was at a point in pregnancy where it was safe," said Martinez' oncologist, Dr. Robyn Young.
Young, who works at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders in Fort Worth, has treated several pregnant women with cancer. The center is now helping other women and men learn their risks of developing the disease using an Internet quiz.
The 17-question test not only helps determine one's risk of developing cancer, it will teaches ways to prevent it.
"It gives us that power back, that cancer doesn't just happen to you," Dr. Young said, "there are things we can do to reduce our risk of developing cancer."
"Cancer took away a lot from me but it actually gave me much more," Martinez said.
Despite the cancer or the chemo, Martinez now has a health baby girl, named Serenity.
"She was born six weeks premature but perfectly healthy, with a full head of hair, a lot more than I had at the time," Martinez said. "It was like chemo never touched her."
Martinez is now six months cancer-free.
Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis, she will have her right breast removed to prevent the disease from ever coming back.
"With everything that's known about cancer and my age, being relatively young and having an aggressive type of breast cancer, it would lower my chances of developing a new cancer in my right breast," she explained, "I chose the day I was diagnosed as the day I would do something to prevent myself from ever getting breast cancer again."
