Two-Time Breast Cancer Survivor Finds New Lust for Life

Joanne Mozuras is looking forward to growing old.

At 55, Mozuras is a two-time breast cancer survivor who gives new value to every moment in life she is cancer free.

“Do you understand I can now live to see my hair grow gray or my grandchildren grow up?” she said. “You just look at life differently. You take in the colors outside or the sky. I look at my son, my husband, and you’re just so grateful for what you have anymore.”

A certified nurse midwife by profession, it was Mozuras’ gut instinct, rather than her medical knowledge, that led her to her first diagnosis in 1997.

“Anybody you talk to tells you cancer doesn’t have pain until it gets advanced, but in my case, my breasts would swell and hurt and then it would go away,” she said. “You know when something just isn’t right.”

Mozuras insisted on a mammogram and learned her gut was right.

“I opened up (the results) in the car and read the report in the parking lot and it said, “Highly suspicious of cancer. Immediate biopsy recommended,’ and I just sobbed,” she said. “I just cried because I had put it off for almost nine months or longer.”

A biopsy confirmed the cancer and the world changed for this Macomb Township wife and mother.

“Suddenly everything you thought was important in life, isn’t important anymore,” Mozuras said. “You just change. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to think negative about it. I was going to think positive. I was going to do whatever they tell me to do because I wanted to see my child grow up.

”I wanted to live."

Opting for a lumpectomy over a mastectomy, Mozuras began almost a year of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. 

“It didn’t bother me until my hair started to fall out,” she said. “And it falls out in clumps. You start seeing patches of baldness and lose your eyelashes, your nose hairs … who thinks about their nose hairs? But they hydrate the air when you breathe, so without them I was getting nosebleeds. You just change.”

Now, 15 years after her first diagnosis, Mozuras still remembers the day she went to pick out her wig.

“I was going to do this by myself,” she said. “I’d pick out a wig, put it on and I’d cry. I’d take it off, put on another wig and I’d cry and take it off. The woman in the store came up to me and said, ‘Dear, do you need some help?’ I said, ‘No, I’m fine,’ and took another wig.”

It was at this point Mozuras realized that however much she wanted to get through this herself, she needed the love and support of her family. With this support she finished her last treatments and “got better and got back to being me.”

But 10 years later the cancer was back.

“I think that was harder than the first time because then you think, ‘I did everything they told me to do. I got organic meat, took my vitamins, why did it come back?’"

This time, Mozuras underwent a mastectomy.

“You look in the mirror and you just cry,” she said. “Part of me is different.”

Rather than wear a heavy prosthesis, Mozuras opted for reconstructive surgery, and though she admits the surgery was more painful than any of her cancer treatments, she believes the freedom it offers was worth it. 

“When someone looks at me now, they don’t know I have breast cancer,” she said.

Cancer free now for three years, Mozuras said she is moving on with her life but using her experience to emphasize the importance of mammograms for her patients.

“If I can convince one lady to get her mammogram and she catches breast cancer early and treated, that is the big thing,” she said. “You get it early, treat it and live to be old and gray.”

And Mozuras can’t wait to be old and gray.