In Loving Memory of Marnie
(Brian, Marnie’s
Partner)
Return to Patient
Stories
Return to
Patient
Stories
To continue Marnie’s legacy, Marnie’s partner shared their mBC story with us. Documenting their
experiences, they published I Can't Make Lunch Today, a book to help raise awareness and
help other
families
going through mBC.
This is Marnie’s story.
Diagnosis: My wife’s name was Marnie Parker – Marnie Foreman when we got married – and August 7th would have been our 24th wedding anniversary. In January of 2013 after a routine physical and mammogram, she was diagnosed with a form of ductal carcinoma, a common form of breast cancer.
Treatment: We decided to schedule a double mastectomy to eliminate further risk, followed by chemo. We went through all the consultations and appointments getting prepared for reconstruction and recovery, but then less than a week before her surgery was scheduled, MRI results found dots on her liver, colon and lower abdomen – the cancer had metastasized.
At that point we knew we had to take a different route. We knew we were in for a much tougher battle, going from something that could be cured to something that we were going to be up against for the rest of her life.
Living with mBC: You realize how precious life is and you do the things that you want to do. For us, from the beginning, our main goal was to keep life as normal as possible with the kids. Marnie’s attitude was to live with cancer, not to let cancer defeat us. We did everything that we did before – kept family vacations, and just kept living. Did we do some things on our bucket list? Definitely.
The last thing we wanted our kids to hear was that mom was dying – it was so easy for them to find false information out there. We couldn’t find the resources that we needed as a family, so we ended up starting a newsletter, called Team Marnie, which educated the community on what was going on with her through every milestone. We did this for almost three years, while Marnie went through different regimens of chemotherapy and treatment. Eventually, the cancer got aggressive, and we ended up running out of options. Marnie passed away September 29, 2015.
The newsletter continued to evolve, and eventually developed into a book, I Can’t Make Lunch Today, that I wrote with my family documenting our experience in hopes of raising awareness and helping other families going through something as difficult as mBC. It was incredibly therapeutic for me and my kids to write this book which encouraged others to take control of their own journey and leave a legacy for Marnie along with several large fundraising initiatives.
This is Marnie’s story.
Diagnosis: My wife’s name was Marnie Parker – Marnie Foreman when we got married – and August 7th would have been our 24th wedding anniversary. In January of 2013 after a routine physical and mammogram, she was diagnosed with a form of ductal carcinoma, a common form of breast cancer.
Treatment: We decided to schedule a double mastectomy to eliminate further risk, followed by chemo. We went through all the consultations and appointments getting prepared for reconstruction and recovery, but then less than a week before her surgery was scheduled, MRI results found dots on her liver, colon and lower abdomen – the cancer had metastasized.
At that point we knew we had to take a different route. We knew we were in for a much tougher battle, going from something that could be cured to something that we were going to be up against for the rest of her life.
Living with mBC: You realize how precious life is and you do the things that you want to do. For us, from the beginning, our main goal was to keep life as normal as possible with the kids. Marnie’s attitude was to live with cancer, not to let cancer defeat us. We did everything that we did before – kept family vacations, and just kept living. Did we do some things on our bucket list? Definitely.
The last thing we wanted our kids to hear was that mom was dying – it was so easy for them to find false information out there. We couldn’t find the resources that we needed as a family, so we ended up starting a newsletter, called Team Marnie, which educated the community on what was going on with her through every milestone. We did this for almost three years, while Marnie went through different regimens of chemotherapy and treatment. Eventually, the cancer got aggressive, and we ended up running out of options. Marnie passed away September 29, 2015.
The newsletter continued to evolve, and eventually developed into a book, I Can’t Make Lunch Today, that I wrote with my family documenting our experience in hopes of raising awareness and helping other families going through something as difficult as mBC. It was incredibly therapeutic for me and my kids to write this book which encouraged others to take control of their own journey and leave a legacy for Marnie along with several large fundraising initiatives.
