COM M U N I T Y
BY: KAYLEE CAMPBELL
True Strength
Moore Teacher’s Cancer Fight Inspires Others
A
s you might imagine, it’s difficult to learn that you have cancer, let alone to experience that moment more than once. But for Emily Marshall, a first-grade teacher at Moore’s Central Elementary, that experience is one she is all too familiar with. “The first time I was super terrified,” Marshall said. “You hear the words breast cancer and you think, ‘I’m gonna die.’” But Marshall didn’t let herself think that way for long. Marshall was first diagnosed in 2008 at the age of 33. She is now in the midst of her eighth battle with triple negative breast cancer, which she explained is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat. Marshall tested negative for the BRCA gene, making her initial diagnosis at such a young age even more puzzling. “Nobody in my family has ever had cancer except myself,” Marshall said. “(The doctors) can’t figure out what’s going on.” During her first bout with the disease, 20 | March 2020
Marshall underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy, as well as a lumpectomy, but in 2012, the cancer returned. “At that time, I had a double mastectomy,” Marshall said. “I did chemo, but not radiation. In 2013, I had my reconstruction, and then I had another recurrence in 2015. I asked my oncologist, how in the world do you get breast cancer when you don’t have breasts!” Marshall’s cancer had returned and was growing from the chest wall, through stomach tissue that had been used to rebuild the breast. This time around they tried a left mastectomy along with radiation. When cancer hit Marshall in 2016 for the fourth time, she moved her treatment to the Integris Cancer Institute. Since that time, she’s had two recurrences in 2017, one in 2018 and now, the eighth in total. This time is different — the cancer has made its way to the lymph nodes, which causes concern that it might also appear in other areas of Marshall’s body. While Marshall explained that immunotherapy is being considered as a pos-
