INPERSON
Patient
Ambassador
Darlene Miloser of
Fox Chapel pens her story
about breast cancer in an
effort to help others.
BY JENNIFER BROZAK
Before my diagnosis,
I was just obsessed
with turning 50.
Afterward, I just
wanted to stay alive.
S
hortly before her 50th birthday, Fox
Chapel resident Darlene Miloser
received the heart-breaking news that
she had breast cancer. That was in 2008. Five
years later, Miloser is in full remission, and is
on a mission to share her emotional story.
Working with Tate Publishing &
Enterprises, Miloser has published her first
book, Diary of a Breast Cancer Survivor, as a
way of reaching out to other women who are
facing the life-threatening disease.
“Hearing that diagnosis turns your whole
world upside down,” says Miloser, whose
boys were only 11 and 15 at the time. She
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turned to her faith to help her through the
treatment.
“Before my diagnosis, I was just obsessed
with turning 50. Afterward, I just wanted to
stay alive,” she says. “I dropped to my knees
and prayed to God to please let me stay
here and raise my children, to be with my
husband. I promised that if he let me live,
that I would do anything I could to help as
many other women as I could get through
this.”
Having no history of breast cancer in
her family, Miloser learned she had the
disease after discovering a lump during a
self-examination – just three weeks after
she had undergone a routine mammogram,
which, other than finding evidence of known
breast calcifications, had indicated nothing
suspicious.
Further testing revealed a cancerous
tumor and a precancerous mass in one
breast, and a precancerous mass in the other.
She began chemotherapy and despite the fact
that it shrunk the tumors and eliminated any
other signs of cancer in her body, she opted
for a bilateral mastectomy with subsequent
reconstruction.
“I didn’t want to take any chances,” she
explains. “I didn’t want to go through this
again.”