Amanda Peet revealed that a breast cancer diagnosis last fall came amid an already difficult time.
âFor many years, Iâve been told that I have âdenseâ and âbusyâ breasts â not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring,â the âYour Friends and Neighborsâ star wrote in a New Yorker essay published on Saturday.
She added, âI had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups. The Friday before Labor Day, I went for what I thought would be a routine scan.â
After a doctor âdidnât like the way something lookedâ on an ultrasound, she had a biopsy.
âAfter the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. Thatâs when I knew,â she explained, noting that results were shared with her the following day.
âThe tumor âappearedâ to be small, but I would need an MRI after the holiday weekend to determine âthe extent of disease,ââ Peet went on.
To make matters even more difficult, her âlong divorcedâ parents were in hospice âon opposite coasts,â she wrote.
âOur motherâs had started in June, but our fatherâs was only a week in, so we hadnât expected him to go first,â she continued, referencing her sister.
âI flew to New York. I didnât make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.â
Peet â who married David Benioff in 2006 and has since welcomed three children with him â learned that her stage I diagnosis was âhormone-receptor-positiveâ and âHER2-negativeâ upon arriving back in Los Angeles.
She noted that she was âhappier than Iâd been pre-diagnosis, when I was just a regular person who didnât have cancer.â
âBut after about 10 minutes, I remembered that I still needed the MRI and regressed to baseline terror,â she explained.
Her doctor then told her that âthe radiologist would check my lymph nodes, as well as âthe left side for any surprise findingsâ and call with the results within a week. It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.â
Another benign mass was located in her breast, and a lumpectomy and radiation would be the treatment.
The âSaving Silvermanâ actress then recounted her final, tender moments with her mother, who died in January.
âThe morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision,â she wrote.
âWe locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.â
After the intimate revelations, friend Sarah Paulson gushed over the essay in a social media post on Saturday.
âMy best friend, Amanda Peetâthe weirdest thing in the world is to say her full name out loud, as I call her Birdâbut thatâs the name her parents gave her,â Paulson captioned a photo of the magazine article.
âSeems fitting to use here as she has written the most profoundly gorgeous essay about the loss of her parents, while dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis.â
The âAmerican Horror Storyâ actress continued, saying that sheâs âscreaming from the rooftops with joy.â
âMy friend is a @newyorkermag essayist. How outrageously groovy is that? Bird, I love you beyond,â she concluded the post.
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