‘Gratitude will get you through anything’

Mother of four focuses on living positively while battling breast cancer.

René Anderson’s radiologist husband didn’t have to say a word. His somber face was a clue about her mammogram results.

“I could see it all over his face,” she says. “He was the one who read it, and he had tears in his eyes.”

The wife of Dr. Jon Anderson and mother of four, who divides her time between homes in Leesburg and California, never expected to be among the American Cancer Society statistics of being one in eight women diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I was always healthy, ate right, exercised, and I don’t have family history of cancer,” she says.

“It wasn’t one of those things that I thought about much.” In October 2015, however, the then-49-year-old couldn’t stop thinking about the lump she felt on the side of her right breast. After she was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer, which she learned is a more aggressive type of cancer that can metastasize into the brain and liver, René had an MRI to make sure the cancer wasn’t anywhere else in her body.

The lump was removed along with some lymph nodes. “At first, it seemed overwhelming,” she says of undergoing radiation therapy every Monday through Friday, followed on Wednesdays by chemotherapy of Herceptin, a drug to target HER2.

“When they tell you all that you have to do, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ and it was a yearlong process,” she says. “But, once you start, it just becomes routine—a part of your life for that period of time.” René taped uplifting messages on her IV stand to cope.

She wanted her family life to be as normal as possible for her children, who are now 21, 15, 14, and 11.

“I still did everything that I needed to do, and I made sure to look at everything positively. I did things that I felt were good for me and my body,” René says of holistic measures that didn’t interfere with her cancer treatments. She drank green smoothies every morning.

She took B6 and glutamine daily, and she added reishi mushroom extract to her water to boost her immune system. René also pampered herself with massages, yoga, and meditation, and focused on the good things in her life, and she continues to take medication.

“A positive attitude is everything, and a heart filled with love and gratitude will get you through anything,” she says.