Sister Saturdays – Heather Durosko

Do you remember the day you were diagnosed? Is cancer ‘in your family’? 

About a month after I turned 26, I found a lump one night. I was a few weeks into a recent break-up and had met two friends to celebrate Halloween downtown in Washington, DC. When I laid down on my side to go to bed that night I felt it. It was about the size of a small walnut in my right breast and I knew immediately in my gut what would not be confirmed until 25 days later. I was able to get in the next day to see my ob-gyn, but she confidently assured me that “it” was nothing to worry about. I scheduled an appointment to get an ultrasound a few weeks later, expecting that I might have to get “it” drained, at this point confident that it was a benign tumor or cyst. It was during that appointment that my inner alarm bells started going back off when they did the ultrasound and fell quiet. I was asked if I could stay for a mammogram and a biopsy and before I left the doctor’s office that day the radiologist told me to prepare myself. The official diagnosis didn’t come until the following Monday. It was the end of the work day and most of my coworkers had already gone home when I got the call. I have a vivid memory of standing by the window and asking the radiologist as my voice broke if I had to worry about dying. My thoughts were flooded with so many questions: What stage is it? What happens next? Will I lose my hair? At the time of diagnosis you don’t have answers to any of these. That moment and everything for a while afterwards felt surreal, like I was living someone else’s life. I went back and forth between some combination of confused, terrified, and in disbelief those first days and I couldn’t help replaying the thought that days before I was in the best shape of my life–I had just set a personal record running a half marathon with my brother. Day by day over the next several weeks, each additional scan and doctor’s appointment started to fill in small pieces of information about what was coming next. I have no family history of breast cancer and no gene mutations associated with any cancers. 

Current treatment plan? 

About a year after finishing chemotherapy I found a new “pea-size” lump on the same side that I had my mastectomy. My doctors thought it was nothing of concern, but by then I had learned to trust my body no matter what assurances had been offered. I pushed for surgery to remove it, the only way to be 100% sure, and the results came back as cancer again. It’s been about 4 and a half years since finishing active treatment for that second diagnosis and just over 6 years since my initial diagnosis. Because my cancer was hormone-receptor positive (estrogen and progesterone), my current treatment plan is hormone therapy for at least 10 years. In addition to monthly ovarian suppression shots, which switch off the production of estrogen from your ovaries, I took an aromatase inhibitor pill daily for a year and a half. After my recurrence, I switched to Tamoxifen, which I take daily. Tamoxifen blocks estrogen from reaching estrogen receptors on breast cancer cells, inhibiting cancer growth. I stopped ovarian suppression three years ago, due to quality of life issues as a result of side effects. Every 6 months I alternate between different types of scans for ongoing monitoring.

How is work for you? How has it been affected by cancer? 

My career path has been a hodgepodge of positions related to human services including: classroom teaching, policy and advocacy work on Capitol Hill, and working in child welfare and early childhood education. When I was diagnosed, I was working for a nonprofit association in Washington, DC making a really low salary, but I had good health benefits and a flexible leave policy that made a huge difference during treatment. My company let me work from doctor’s waiting rooms as long as I had wifi and my hospital was only a mile down the road from work. There are many jobs and locations would have never had that type of flexibility and I thought about that all the time. 

Most of my work-related stress from cancer has come from worrying about health insurance. It’s harder to take career risks or move around when your insurance is tied to your employment. After finishing active treatment for my second diagnosis, I really wanted to move to Colorado, but I wanted to have a job first because I needed health insurance for my medicine and my scans. A couple years and hundreds of job applications and interviews later, I was finally offered a fellowship in child welfare leadership that initially took me to Connecticut and enabled me to finally move to Colorado. Five years after I had started dreaming of moving, I finally made it. Although cancer related to my career path has made me feel stuck or slowed down several times, it has also been a huge reason why I’ve been able to take big leaps of faith or move just to see where things would lead in the first place. When life feels saturated with unknowns, it can feel terrifying, but my experiences with those moments have taught me to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time and keep going. 

Yoga or meditation? 

BOTH! When my mind is busy or stressed, I have always had a hard time getting in touch with my body and what it’s trying to tell me. I used to keep myself on the go all the time and it was hard to be present. Yoga and meditation practice were both some of the hardest things to start, but are now integral to my life and my health. They have been essential in helping me cope and feel inner peace amidst the turmoil when everything feels out of control. They have helped me live in the present, process my cancer diagnoses and trauma on the emotional side, regain full range of motion after surgery, restore my ability to focus with lingering “chemo brain,” and improve my overall well-being and self-care. Loving kindness meditation is one of my favorite types of meditation and Vinyasa and Yin Yoga are my favorite types of yoga. I know when I LEAST want to do them, is when I need them the most! 

Does nature/being outdoors support your physical and/or emotional well-being? Favorite activities? 

Being outdoors and adventuring in nature is when I feel the most alive. It helps me breathe, process my emotions, connect with myself or loved ones, and focus on being in the moment which makes me feel peaceful internally. I feel extremely grateful for the gorgeous scenery in Colorado. I love to hike, road and mountain bike, rock climb, and swim. I just got into backpacking last year and loved every second of the 3 day, Four Pass Loop around Maroon Bells.

Has cancer been a struggle in your relationships? 

Cancer in many ways has been a catalyst for deeper relationships with many friends and family. I lost my brother Brad when I was in high school and for many years afterwards faced overwhelming anxiety at losing another loved one and being fearful that life doesn’t always work out. I had built up a pretty strong reliance on being independent and was scared to ask for or even need help. Cancer made me look at everything differently. Closeness, connection, support. When I opened up to friends and family and showed up with my most vulnerable self, I was overwhelmed with joy when so many loved ones showed up right back. More than anything, the love from those relationships with friends and family and the kindness of nurses, strangers, and neighbors, is what gave and continues to give me hope. It is what I am the most grateful for every day in this life. 

What about dating?

I was single during both of my diagnoses. Even though friends and coworkers often told me I had a “beautifully shaped head,” losing my hair, losing my breast tissue, dealing with side effects of hormone therapy and medically-induced menopause could still weigh heavy on a bad day. I definitely tried to give myself a lot of grace to process and grieve the things our culture typically defines as part of feminine, physical beauty, as well as, arbitrary timelines for life and fertility milestones as a woman. Grief related to those things still shows up sometimes, even several years down the road, and when it does I try to embrace it, let it in to feel what’s coming up, and reflect on it so I can process and release it. I like to believe that my experience with cancer has given me courage and helped me practice discerning and saying what I need, helped me let go of ingrained cultural expectations, made it easier to notice and express gratitude, and deepened my ability to be vulnerable with the people I love. 

CBD or THC? 

I think THC would have definitely helped for sleep and intense insomnia if I had access to it or knew where to start. I think I slept an average of 3 hours a night for over 4 years after my diagnosis. Doctors kept prescribing me intense sleep medications like Ambien or Xanax, which I refused to take more than on a couple of occasions because of the high risk of dependency issues. 

Anything missing in your support space? (insurance coverage, meals on wheels, age appropriate group therapy, hot guys delivering chemo or otherwise?) 

Affordable, quality health care that supports access to and healing through integrative medicine (and stays with me regardless of my job or what state I live in)!

Do you have any insights or thoughts on how ‘social distancing’ is affecting women with cancer? 

The barriers to connecting with others in person is something I think about all the time for those going through cancer. Sleeping on the couch next to my mom, waking up to a hospital room full of my best friends, going to my nieces’ sports games, getting blowouts with friends before losing my hair, the healing touch during a Reiki session, going snowboarding with my brother and sister in law, looking forward to traveling internationally post-chemo, connecting in person with others going through treatment–all of these things that were integral to my healing are harder to access right now or in some cases haven’t been possible at all during COVID. 

What’s the hardest part of all of this?

Getting through the hardest days, when one’s in the middle of despair.

What’s the easiest part of all this? What makes you happy?

When life feels incredibly uncertain, focusing on the present moment and the days one by one get me through. One day at a time. One step at a time. Spending time with loved ones, walking in the sunshine, making a cup of coffee with frothed non-dairy milk in the morning, the quiet of the forest on a hike, cooking a new healthy recipe, laughing in good company, doing a race with my brothers, reading a good book next to my mom, coffee shops, making TikToks with my nieces, not having to go to the doctor’s office today, the calming sound of water, the strangers that helped me dig my car out of the snow yesterday, lavender spray at the end of a yoga class, traveling solo, photography, wearing comfy clothes and having nowhere to go, candles, learning and trying new things I never thought I would do. The small things are my big things. 

What would you say today to a young woman being diagnosed with breast cancer?

Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself permission to feel everything. Let the people who love you be there for you. Be present. Trust yourself. Advocate for yourself. There is no timeline or end date to healing or grief. I’ll be thinking of you.

P.s. Look into Little Pink Houses of Hope (LPHOH) and Boarding for Breast Cancer (B4BC)!

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