Five Sisters, Four Cancer Patients
Oct. 26, 2009— -- Gail Swanson Molla, Debbie Swanson Ryan, Trisha Swanson Bergeron, Lisa Swanson Eddy and Paula Swanson. They are sisters who are united in love and a battle against breast cancer.
In 2002, Paula Swanson, the youngest of five, was the first to be diagnosed with the dreaded disease.
She got treatment, but the cancer returned in 2007. That was just the beginning of the bad news for the family.
Bergeron was the next to announce that she, too, had the disease. Then came Ryan's diagnosis, followed by Eddy's, who announced it on April Fool's Day, jokingly saying she had "caught it" from her sisters.
When she got the news of the diagnosis, Eddy said she thought it was a bad joke.
"I just didn't think it was gonna happen. … I thought about the odds. I said, 'No, not four in one family,'" she told "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts.
The only sister to remain cancer-free is Molla, who, unlike her siblings, did not test positive for the genetic mutation that is linked to hereditary breast cancer.
She feels relief, primarily because her testing negative is good for her own children's future. But she also feels guilty.
"My being negative didn't take away any of their illness," she said.
The women's mother died of ovarian cancer at 67 years old.
For the sisters -- who have seven daughters, two sons and grandchildren among them -- love and humor have played equally significant parts in their journey through the ups and downs of living with cancer.
Their coping strategies include talking to each other on the phone, going to doctors' appointments, sharing meals, holding hands through chemotherapy and crying and laughing together.
"My family called me Chemo-sobby when I was going through chemo," said Swanson, whose disease is terminal.
Bergeron's daughter Joelle said that if she ends up developing breast cancer, she'd have "incredible role models to look up to."
