- The Home Edit founder Clea Shearer faced a scary “complication” in her ongoing recovery from breast cancer when she developed an infection that could necessitate the removal of her implant
- Shearer said she “burst into tears,” citing “all those feelings it brought up for me about my body and my femininity”
- The infection cleared, but as she shared, recovery “continues to be a long and often difficult journey”
Clea Shearer shared a scary “complication” in her ongoing recovery from breast cancer — one that made her “burst into tears.”
The Home Edit founder shared an update on Instagram on Tuesday, Feb. 18, explaining that on Valentine’s day, she “developed a massive pain in my right breast.”
“By the morning, my entire right breast looked and felt sunburned and the pain was awful. I consulted with my doctor and he put me on very strong antibiotics hoping to knock out whatever was happening (which of course ONLY happens on a holiday weekend),” Shearer, 43, wrote.
By Sunday, Feb. 16, Shearer was planning to travel to New York for an appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark, but said she had to cancel.
“I thought I could push through. I’ve sadly developed a pretty high threshold for pain,” she explained, saying that canceling was “a lesson in listening to your body, and I’m so glad I did.”
That’s because by the next day her “breast was more red, hotter to the touch, and felt like there was pressure building.”
She continued, “I FaceTimed with my doctor to show the progression, and we talked about going to the ER, but decided instead to get examined and an ultrasound the next day.”
Getting the ultrasound, she shared, was “triggering” because it was in that room at Vanderbilt Breast Center in Nashville where “I learned I had breast cancer.”
Before she underwent the exam, Shearer said that her doctor told her to “emotionally prepare for needing to go flat” — meaning the implants that she’d had following a double mastectomy may need to be removed.
“I immediately burst into tears at the thought of losing my breasts twice. I know a lot of women choose that path, but this wasn’t what I wanted,” she explained. “I’ve spent a year and a half in constant surgeries to make myself feel whole again and it was too much to process.”
Nearly three years ago, the professional organizer and star of Get Organized with the Home Edit, was diagnosed with stage 2 invasive mammary carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer, in March 2022. Shearer underwent months of chemotherapy and radiation and multiple surgeries, including the double mastectomy and removal of her ovaries.
Shearer was declared cancer-free in November 2022 and underwent breast reconstruction surgery two years later.
However, in January, the incision site of her breast implant started tearing, she told PEOPLE. While “it went really well,” the surgery to repair it — her eighth — “threw me for a loop.”
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At the prospect of losing her implant, Shearer said, “I sobbed. I don’t really sob and I don’t usually get that nervous … but this time I was really afraid of going back to that very dark period of my life following my double mastectomy and all those feelings it brought up for me about my body and my femininity … the thought of going back to nothing … it might seem shallow but the lack of completeness that cancer sometimes causes has definitely been weighing on me for the last couple of years.”
But as she shared, “I don’t have cancer,” and by the time she got examined, “I had substantially improved.”
“The antibiotics seem to be working, and I keep talking to my implant to stay alive like it’s a tamagotchi,” she said. “Everything actually looks good for a change.”
“This continues to be a long and often difficult journey …. Crying happy tears sure beats the other way around.”
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