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Mary Cota Rusnak ’68, G’90, a reading teacher in Swanton, Vermont, was 29 with three children under six when she discovered a lump in her breast. Her doctor couldn’t detect it, but surgery revealed “a golf-ball-size tumor” and one positive lymph node. Mary had a modified radical mastectomy — removal of all breast tissue and some chest muscle — followed by chemotherapy. Two of the three chemo drugs were experimental at the time, and the treatment went on for two years — five days at a time every six weeks. She had little choice but to bring the children with her to the sessions at the medical center in Burlington, along with a family member to drive her. “I had great family support,” she says.

“They tell you when you’ve passed the 10-year mark (without recurrence), that you’re okay,” she says. Mary had hit the twelve-year mark when a new carcinoma — not a metastasis from the first tumor — was found in her other breast. After a second mastectomy, she began taking tamoxifen. But, after three months, she had gained 50 pounds and decided to stop. She had struggled with weight gains after the children were born, she says, and at the time of both cancer diagnoses, she had just lost a lot of weight. She wonders now if there’s a connection.

Experiences of Alumnae