Battling Breast Cancer: Local Mother, Wife, Survivor Moves Forward

Emma Carter sat in the doctor’s office, suddenly feeling as if she had just been stabbed in the back.

But there was no one to blame, no one to yell at and no one for her to be angry with. At 34, the mother of two young children had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“My friends and I were bike riding in the beginning of September last year, and I thought I pulled a muscle from lifting a bike out of the car,” Carter said. “I went to feel for a torn muscle and felt a lump—I knew what it was—my gut told me this was not good.”

With no family history of breast cancer, she hoped it was a cyst, but continued to have a bad feeling about it. Carter of Munhall, who works at , said the same week, the staff was picking out new t-shirts for work. She noticed a pink one, grabbed it, and then saw the breast cancer awareness ribbons.

She had yet to tell anyone about the lump she had found and had been putting off going to the doctor for a few days.

“I thought, ‘I gotta go,’” she said after picking the shirt before even realizing its message. “My friend gave me her doctor’s name and he sent me to get a mammogram just in case.”

A few days later, she received a diagnosis mammogram. A doctor on site told her she needed to go to a breast surgeon, who agreed it looked like cancer. A week later, she had a biopsy.

“A week after that, they said I had stage one breast cancer,” Carter said. “They said, ‘You’re going to have a lumpectomy and radiation treatment.”

But it didn’t end with the doctor’s original plan. Carter’s mother has a friend who is an oncologist who told her that she needed an oncologist to oversee the breast surgeon and plastic surgeon. Soon after, she visited an oncologist at the Hillman Cancer Center who told her she needed an MRI before the surgery. That test found two more spots of cancer in the same breast.

“He said I needed a mastectomy and I decided to have reconstruction surgery,” she said. “I had surgery two days after Christmas.”

After recovering, she went to a breast surgeon for a follow-up, who then sent her to another appointment with the oncologist.

“He said, ‘All three areas were stage one but bigger than we thought they were,’” she said. “He said, ‘You need to have chemo just in case.’”

Carter was devastated.

"I thought I was done and would just go on a medication and that was it," she said. "And I didn't bring anyone with me to that appointment because I thought it was just a follow-up. Then, all of a sudden, he tells me I need chemo."

While she finished chemo over the summer, Carter now takes two medications, one of which she will take for the next five years.

Losing her hair turned her battle into a public one, which at times gave her support from other women who had just finished chemo, and in other ways that brought her down.

"I took my kids to the pool and there were two young girls making comments," she said with tears in her eyes. "You just don't need the reminder."

Just before her diagnosis, Carter had lost 30 pounds and gotten into exercise. She said she believes it’s one of the reasons she found the lump early.

“It really feels like someone is stabbing you in the back and you just don’t know who is doing it,” she said. “It’s very frustrating to not understand why—and I have to be concerned about this for the rest of my life.”

Through all of her treatments, Carter continued on with her life working regular shifts at Square Cafe and keeping up with her children’s play dates. Those distractions were exactly what kept her going. , her coworker at Square Cafe, got a pink ribbon tattoo with her name on it.

“There are online support groups that have helped and I had all of this going on, but I still had to take care of my kids, do the dishes and pay the bills," she said.

Her children and husband have offered her love and support along the way.

“When I started chemo and couldn’t take them to play group, they understood why they couldn’t go and they didn’t whine and complain about it,” she said. “We went to Kennywood and the doctor couldn’t even believe that because I was too sick to have my scheduled chemo. He said, ‘Good going, Miss Kennywood.’”

For all young women out there, Carter had one word of advice.

“Do the self and follow your gut,” she said. “If you’re sitting there saying you don’t want to go to the doctor because you know something is wrong, go anyway because you know there is something wrong.”

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For upcoming events, .