Marnie’s Army

Five months after her daughter’s birth, Marnie
was diagnosed with Stage IV Inflammatory
Breast Cancer. This insidious cancer disguised itself as mastitis, perplexing Marnie’s OBGYN,
lactation consultants, and a breast specialist
when it did not respond to antibiotics, and
delaying appropriate cancer treatment for
months. Why wasn’t cancer brought up as a
possibility during those months? Between the
challenges of healthcare in a pandemic and the
fact that this type of breast cancer affects only 1-5% of all breast cancer diagnoses, it is not the
first thing that comes to most practitioners’
minds. This cancer mainly targets younger
women who are assumed to be at a lower risk
for breast cancer, and when it does finally show up in a mammogram, it is already either at stage III or stage IV, having spread to lymph nodes or
beyond.

Marnie’s cancer is incredibly aggressive and has already spread past her lymph nodes and into
her sternum. Because inflammatory breast
tumors are typically hormone receptor negative (as they are in Marnie’s case), hormone
therapies that are typically used to interfere
with the growth of cancer cells are not as
effective against these tumors. This means that Marnie’s cancer treatments need to attack her
ENTIRE body. She is being treated with a
combination of chemotherapy and
immunotherapy in order to attack her cells and
then heal her immune system, all while trying to pinpoint the bad cells and attack them more
specifically. The immunotherapy medication is
critical to Marnie’s treatment plan and is still
undergoing clinical trials, which equals greater
cost to Zack and Marnie as insurance will not
fully cover it. Right now there is no known cure
for metastatic cancer, so Marnie and Zack have a long journey ahead of them as they seek the
combination of medications that will suppress
her cancer and allow her to continue to live her
life to its fullest. The unforeseeable costs that
come with this diagnosis are indefinite.

Please share this fund not only to support
Marnie and Zack Robidas and their beloved daughter,
but also to remind people to listen to their
intuition when something feels off with their
body. Young women especially, please see this
story and be reminded how important it is to
advocate for your own health.

Marnie and Zack are so grateful for the support they have received from far and wide. Thank you for being a part of their army in this battle.