First published by Columbia's Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC).
While cleaning the house one day, Orisel Bejaran felt an itch across her chest. She scratched it, immediately noticing a lump on her breast. After an ultrasound and biopsy, Orisel was diagnosed with stage 2 HER2-positive breast cancer a week later, at the age of 31.
“My mom is a breast cancer survivor, along with her older sister, and two aunts on my father’s side have undergone mastectomies,” says Orisel, now 37, who received her diagnosis in 2018. “So, I knew of the risk—but at 31, breast cancer was the last thing on my mind.”
The Washington Heights native got the call from her radiologist while in Manhattan, on the way to her job as a restaurant manager. Instead of going into work, she decided to meet her close friend, Lana, at one of her favorite restaurants, Serafina on 55th and Broadway, where Lana worked as a bartender. Because she couldn’t bear to say the words out loud, she wrote “I have cancer” on a napkin at the bar and handed it to them.
“My friend took the little napkin and very calmly looked up at me,” Orisel recalls. “She goes, ‘I’m going to keep this, and when you beat it, we’ll burn it up at the bar.’”
Shortly after, she went with her mother to meet medical oncologist Melissa Accordino, MD, and breast surgeon Lisa Wiechmann, MD, both members of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Wiechmann had treated Orisel’s aunt a few months earlier.
“My mom would go with my aunt to her appointments, so when Dr. Wiechmann comes into the room, she rushes to my mom to give her a hug,” Orisel says. “I was so nervous that day, but at that moment, I knew this was my crew, my team. These were going to be my people.”
With the help of her team at Columbia, Orisel powered through six rounds of chemotherapy in less than six months, while still working full-time. She suffered debilitating side effects, including cluster headaches, skin breakouts, and gastrointestinal issues. Then, she had a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy, and finally over six months of Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody that targets HER2.
The treatment saved her life. And as promised, Orisel, now cancer-free, returned to Serafina with her friends and set fire to that very same napkin from more than a year ago to celebrate her victory over breast cancer.
“I went into the hospital with cancer, and I came out without it. I’m super thankful because, by the time I caught it, the cancer was already at stage 2,” she says. “Because my breasts were so dense, had I not found it, we either would have found it very late, or maybe I wouldn’t be here telling this story.”
In February of this year, she underwent a full mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, also at Columbia. And October 18th, which she has dubbed her “rebirth date,” will mark six years of remission.
After her cancer diagnosis, she felt isolated despite having the support of family and friends around her because she didn’t see other patients or survivors who looked like her. That’s why, despite subverting cultural norms, she never hesitates to speak openly about her experience with cancer.
“I’m Dominican, and I grew up in a culture where talking about disease is very taboo still,” she says. “The biggest thing that I would say, particularly with Latinas and other marginalized communities, is please speak about illness. Everyone goes through things like this, and no one should feel like they are alone.”
Related:
- State of the Union: Breast Care Today
- Advancing Breast Cancer Treatment: Dr. Roshni Rao on the Latest Breakthroughs from the I-SPY Trial
- Oncoplastic Surgery: An Interdisciplinary Trend Towards Breast Conservation in Breast Cancer Surgery