As she sat on her bathroom floor sobbing she couldn't help but ask herself, “why me?” A rush of uncontrollable emotions was triggered by the thought of the word - “cancer.”
Women's health guidelines recommend yearly mammograms for all women beginning at age 40; she was only 33.
It all started one morning in the shower when Claudia Serpico felt a lump while washing her body. Her fingers detected something she knew was foreign, something she knew didn’t belong.
“It scared the hell out of me,” she said.
She immediately jumped out of the shower and called her husband at work. He convinced her not to panic and that it was probably nothing to worry about. They would visit the doctor ASAP.
“I had no idea where to begin. How do you explain to a 9-and 4-year-old that you have cancer? It's amazing how your world can be turned upside down. Everything that you once thought was fair and just in your world 24 hours ago no longer is. To say the least, my life as I had known it changed in an instant,” said Serpico.
Serpico is a 20-year survivor of breast cancer and one whose life has changed dramatically from that very first moment she discovered the small lump.
Serpico's mother, Marie Basel, had been diagnosed with cancer just three years prior to Serpico discovering the lump in her own breast. Having witnessed her mother's recent struggle with cancer helped heighten Serpico's awareness of the many implications associated with the disease and reminded her of the daunting statistics. Her mother having had cancer meant that the chances she now had cancer were dramatically increased.
“As much as I understood my increased risk for cancer, still I never thought I would be a mother with two young children, with a husband and with cancer,” she said.
Because of her young age the doctors initially assured Serpico that the lump was probably nothing more than a cyst and nothing to be overly concerned about. However the test results told a much different story. The lump was not a cyst, it was a tumor and the tumor was not benign, it was malignant. She had cancer.
“At the time I was diagnosed my father-in-law worked at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York,” she said. “Twenty years ago health insurance wasn't like it is today,” she continued, “things were quite different. At any rate, he told me to come to the hospital and they wouldn't charge me. I got to see one of the best breast surgeons in the U.S. at the time.”
Serpico, holding back tears, said, “I remember my oldest daughter, Andrea, having friends over and I would run my fingers through my hair and huge clumps of it would fall out. Andrea would tell her friends that I was shedding like a dog. She had no idea what was going on.”
“I don't remember much, I was only 9 years old at the time,” said Andrea Gregory, Serpico’s oldest daughter. “My mom and dad sat us down in the “white room,” the one no one is ever allowed in, and my father did the talking. I do remember thinking my mom was going to die,” she said. “I remember when she lost her hair, and I
remember not understanding why. A lot of friends brought food, I had a lot of sleepovers at friends homes, and a lot of babysitters.”
After Serpico received a lumpectomy she received both chemotherapy and radiation treatments, treatments she states seemed agonizing and unbearable at times, but they saved her life. Serpico’s struggle continued as she tried to balance being a mother, a wife and a cancer patient. There were times when she felt lost, as if there was nothing that anyone could do or say to her.
“I remember one morning going upstairs and taking my blow dryer, curling iron, and brush and throwing them across my bathroom because I knew that there was nothing that they could do for me anymore,” she said. “I lost all my hair, my eyebrows and my eyelashes. No matter what I did I was no longer the same.”
Serpico remembers the day her aunt, Dolores Puydak, came to watch her two daughters, “she brought a crock pot of food and she looked at me and said, even if you feel like sobbing and giving up, you need to wake up every morning, put on a little make-up, get dressed and go downstairs.”
“My daughter Noreen and her were great friends and they loved the beach,” said Puydak. “The one thing I will always remember about Claudia is that she was a looker. Even when she had cancer she was beautiful.”
Serpico’s Aunt Dolores and her family helped her to win the biggest battle she ever had to face.
“Without them I don’t know what would have happened to me,” she said “they helped me every step of the way.”
Serpico found both inspiration and solace in those around her. She found great source of motivation in her daughters who ultimately became the driving force in her recovery.
“Their smiles and their laughs alone were enough to fight for,” Serpico said.
“When Andrea graduated eighth grade I just sat there sobbing because I didn’t think I would live to see her graduate middle school,” she said. “I sat there with my husband, my youngest daughter Kathryn, and my in-laws and just bawled the entire time.”
“I never thought I would live to see my eldest daughter graduate high school, let alone see both my girls graduate from college, get married, and become a grandmother,” Serpico said.
Between 1984 and now Serpico has learned the importance of family, love, and most importantly life. She never surrendered to the disease, learned to live with the cancer and become a survivor.
“It took a long time,” Serpico said “but when I heard the words “cancer free” I knew I had made it. All I needed was to hear those two words. It was as if I could breathe again.”
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