One year later: One Bronx woman’s breast cancer recovery

Sandy Motie, 36, is pictured on her first day of chemotherapy in 2022 (left) and her last day of chemotherapy in October 2022.

Photos courtesy Sandy Motie

Editor’s note: October marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Throughout the month, the Bronx Times will be providing uplifting stories of cancer survivors and the work being done to eradicate the disease. 

This time last year, Sandy Motie was preparing for a lumpectomy surgery and subsequent radiation treatment after she found a mass in her left breast just a few months prior. The diagnosis was one nobody wants to hear: breast cancer.  

But now the 36-year-old Parkchester resident has completed 16 rounds of chemotherapy, as well as 17 rounds of immunotherapy, a lumpectomy surgery, six weeks of daily radiation, and six months of oral chemotherapy — and is looking ahead to what’s next.

“Time has flown,” Motie, the officer supervisor for the Thoracic Surgery Department at White Plains Hospital in Westchester, said when she caught up with the Bronx Times last month. 

“I returned to work at the end of April and I felt like I never left, I jumped right in,” she said. “And I’m just doing everything that I’m supposed to be doing — traveling, going out, having fun.”

Motie said sometimes reflecting on her past year of treatment is hard to process. She remembers the bad days — not being able to get out of bed, relying heavily on her pre-teenage sons for help with cooking and cleaning, the physical changes to her body. 

According to the American Cancer Society, breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer for women in the United States behind skin cancer — accounting for about 30% of all new female cancers detected every year. Data indicates that there is a 1 in 8 chance for a woman in the U.S. to develop breast cancer at some point of her life, and a 1 in 39 chance she will die from the disease. The American Cancer Society does not currently provide…