Community Stories

It was a tragic event in his own life that allowed Dr. Rashid Abdu, who treated people for decades, to see what his patients were going through.
In 1993, Dr. Abdu’s wife, Joanie, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

For Krissie Moore, her journey through breast cancer was a the “deepest, darkest foggy day” for a year and a half.

“I was walking through that fog [not knowing] what was in front of me,” she said. “I knew someday there’d be a rainbow at the end.”

Goldie Tillman said she is fighting breast cancer for her three children because she wants to make sure she sees them grow up, graduate and start their own lives.

“I don’t want what I’m going through right now to have their minds not really on ‘kid things’ because you only get to be a kid once,” she said.

For Susan Aey, breast cancer was the furthest thing from her mind until one night in bed.

“Imagine my shock when late one night while lying in bed, I had a sharp uncomfortable pain in my left breast, half asleep. I felt for a small lump the next morning – not sure if I had been dreaming. Unfortunately, it was,” she said.

Bodybuilder and animal lover Michelle Apple ignored the lump she found in her armpit for a year and a half before getting a mammogram. She was told it was just a lymph node and not to worry.

The lump grew as she took care of her sick mother, but she ignored it. When Apple’s mother passed, she decided to get retested at Joanie Abdu Comprehensive Breast Care Center. She was diagnosed with Invasive Carcinoma Breast Cancer.

The center was unable to do her lymph node transfer, so she had that procedure at the Cleveland Clinic.

“The scary part was when they did do my surgery, they did remove lymph nodes, and 21 were cancerous. So, moving forward, obviously, that makes me a little anxious,” she said.

Marie Dicesare feels like she was twice struck by lightning in 2017 and 2018.

First, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Then, she learned she had Stage 2 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Breast Cancer.

Katie Audia had a cyst for two years. After she gave birth to her daughter, she realized it had changed – growing to the size of a softball. She sought help at the Joanie Abdu Comprehensive Breast Care Center.

Audia, 32, had just bought a house with her husband. Her daughter was 10 months old when she got a call from the center while at working at Turning Technologies in Youngstown.

Kristina Juratovic describes herself as “patient zero” because there was no history of cancer in her family.

“It was a big shock for everybody,” she said.

Juratovic, a pharmacist at St. Elizabeth’s from Brookfield, did her breast exam two and a half weeks before she found the lump.

Before her Stage 2 breast cancer diagnosis in August 2018, Roslyn Castillo’s life was a balancing act between raising her three children and working.

When she was given her diagnosis, Castillo, 43, was in shock.

At age 53, Sherry Spivey’s life was back on track in January 2016, having just re-enrolled at Youngstown State University to finish her social work degree. Then she was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. When the doctor told Spivey the lump in her breast was a small tumor, she immediately thought of death and believed her life was coming to a sudden halt just as she felt she had started living again.

Cyndi DiClaudio became a grandmother soon after she was cleared from breast cancer. She never thought she would get this far in life after cancer.

“There’s a lot of what-ifs and struggles through the treatment,” she said.