Breast cancer changed how I see life. Now I’m walking with gratitude, hope and purpose

Editor’s note: This first-person essay by Staten Island Advance/SILive.com journalist Tracey Porpora was originally published in 2017, two years after she was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. We are republishing it as part of our ongoing series, Cancer on Staten Island: The Search for Why, which examines the borough’s high cancer rates and the questions surrounding them. Below, Porpora adds a new reflection on how surviving breast cancer has shaped the way she looks at life nearly a decade later.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — I’m one of the lucky ones.

I realized that during six weeks of radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, N.J.

One day early in the process, I was sitting in the radiation waiting room filled with braless women of various ages clad in red and white linen gowns, all waiting to be called for their treatment.

“What are you doing here? You look too young to have cancer — and you have hair,” said a cheerful 60-something-year-old woman with very short gray hair, dangling gold earrings and red lipstick.

I looked around, and she was right. A lot of the women had scarves wrapped around their heads, having lost their locks from chemotherapy.

“I was lucky,” I said to the room of women all sharing one painfully common bond. “I took my routine mammography, and they caught it early — it was less than two centimeters, and it didn’t spread.”