How Screening Every Six Months Caught Maria Kendzierski’s Second Breast Cancer Early

Maria Kendzierski spent years going back to Roswell Park every six months for a mammogram or an MRI, and she did not enjoy the MRIs. So she asked her doctor how long she had to keep doing them. The answer was a question: “how long do you not want to have cancer?” Maria’s reply was “fair enough.”

That exchange is the heart of this week’s Pain 2 Power. Maria is Dave’s cousin, she has been diagnosed with breast cancer twice, and both times it was a scan, not a lump she could feel, that found it.

By The First Rehabilitation Team · Reviewed by Dr. Dave Kashuba, Ph.D.

A cousin from Buffalo, a survivor sweatshirt, and October

Dave grew up in Buffalo in what he called a really tight close family, with 12 or 13 cousins who all hung out and, by his account, all got in trouble together. Maria was the exception, he said, smarter than the rest of them. “She was able to talk her way out of everything.” The family tie runs double: Maria’s mother and Dave’s mother are twins.

Maria joined Dave and Mike McGann over Zoom from Buffalo, where she still lives and still roots for the Bills and the Sabres. (“There’s always next year,” she said.) She opened by pointing at what she was wearing. “I have my survivor sweatshirt on, you can’t see it, this is what a survivor looks like.”

The timing was deliberate. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the show had already given two October episodes to it: radiologist Dr. Don Goodwin on screening, then a dietitian and a Pilates studio owner on food and movement. Dave opened with numbers of his own, saying there are over 400,000 cases diagnosed in women in America and 42,000 deaths a year. Then he explained why he had asked Maria on. Watching from far away, he said, the family prayed for her, and through all of it “she always had a smile. She always had a good attitude.”

2015: a yearly mammogram finds something at stage zero

Maria’s first diagnosis came out of a routine she already had. “I go every year for my checkups, my mammograms,” she said. In 2015 that yearly mammogram showed a suspicious nodule, more tests followed, and the result was stage zero. She had never heard of stage zero. Neither had Mike.

A name that sounded worse than it was

The diagnosis was lobular carcinoma in situ, LCIS for short, and Maria was honest about how it landed. “And has the word carcinoma right in it. So, of course, I’m freaking out.” She said her doctor told her it was just the name they give it, and that there had been efforts to change the name that had not gone anywhere. As she described it, the nodule was encapsulated within itself. They took it out, nothing had spread around it, and there was no further treatment except one medication.

Five years of tamoxifen

That medication was tamoxifen. Maria had come prepared, and she read from her notes: it “blocks the effects of estrogen so that it the estrogen doesn’t attach to cancer cells.” She took it for five years. When the five years ended, she said, she went through a “what now” moment, because the medication had been her crutch. That feeling comes back later in her story.

Every six months at Roswell Park, and the one word on the phone

Because of the first diagnosis, Maria was screened every six months, alternating between mammograms and MRIs. She counts herself lucky on this point. Roswell Park, which she described as a world class comprehensive cancer center, is in her backyard in Buffalo. That is where her doctor gave her the line about how long she wanted to not have cancer.

In June or July of 2024, an MRI found something suspicious. More biopsies followed, and Maria knew what the call would sound like before it came. “I waited for one word, unfortunately, and as soon as the radiologist said unfortunately, I didn’t hear anything else after that.”

She credits a patient portal with getting her through the next few weeks, since she could read every report as it came in. And she credits the six month schedule with the outcome. “Thankfully though because I was going every six months, they caught it early,” she said.

Her sister, her partner in crime, and a decision already made

Maria walked into the treatment conversation with two people. She introduced her sister and her partner in crime to the doctor as “my secretary and my treasurer.” She had already made up her mind. “I said even if they tell me I don’t need chemo, I’m gonna get chemo because I want this out of me.” She was ready for a double mastectomy if that was what it took.

It wasn’t. Her doctors recommended a lumpectomy, not a mastectomy. She described the test result that settled the chemo question as her “onco score”: she said a score of 25 or higher meant they recommend chemo, and hers was 39. “So it wasn’t even my choice,” she said.

A lumpectomy in October, chemo on her birthday in November

The order went like this. Lumpectomy in October. Chemotherapy starting in November, on her birthday. (“Happy birthday to me.”) Eight rounds. Then five weeks of radiation. She lost her long curly hair, which she waved off: it’s just hair, and it came back. Now, she told Dave, she looks a lot more like her mom.

The shots were harder than the chemo

Mike asked how the treatment affected her. Beyond being tired all the time (some days she slept 13 hours), Maria said the chemotherapy itself was not as bad as she expected. The worst part was the injections she needed to keep her white blood cell count where it had to be for the next round. For five days after each one, she said, she had muscle aches, joint aches, everything. “I would be literally sitting in a chair just moaning. I didn’t even realize I was moaning from pain.” What she kept telling herself was that the pain meant the drugs were working.

She had also dreaded the room. She had pictured what she had seen on TV, a big room full of chairs and other people getting chemo at the same time. Her treatment looked nothing like that. She had her own little cubby, staff brought drinks and snacks, she could bring someone with her, and there was a TV. “It certainly wasn’t the Ritz,” she said, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

Forty five minutes in the car, ten minutes on the table

Radiation meant going every day for five weeks. The drive to the hospital was 45 minutes, and the treatment itself put her on the table for about 10. “I was in the car a lot longer than from literally the time I got to the hospital,” she said. She described her side effects as minimal and was quick to add that she knows not everyone gets off that lightly.

The waiting room that changed her mind about meeting people

Maria did not want to make friends at radiation. “I didn’t want to tell my story, I didn’t want to hear your story,” she said. She wanted to get in, get it done and get out. The schedule did not cooperate. Radiation runs at the same time every day, so you sit in the same waiting room with the same people, and sooner or later you talk.

On her first day she walked into the locker room unsure of what to do, and a woman already there asked if it was her first day. Maria still talks to her. Over those weeks she got to know the woman’s mother and husband too, just from sitting in that waiting room. Her verdict on her own first instinct was blunt: “bad on me for not wanting to meet people because you need to surround yourself with people.”

Mike picked up on that near the end of the hour. What struck him was the change, from someone who did not want to be part of any of it to someone whose eyes fill up when a stranger rings the bell. In his words, it can “bring us closer to humanity if you respond to it.”

The family that showed up

Dave talked about Maria’s siblings, who have done cancer research races and fundraising for years, and about how hard it was to be far away with nothing to do but pray. Maria said her siblings each took a turn going with her to chemo, and they pitched in at home because she has two dogs who could not be left alone all day. Both of her sisters told her they would have traded places with her in a heartbeat. “And I know they would, but I’m thankful they didn’t have to.”

Out of the online groups, and away from Dr. Google

Maria had written down a short list of things she learned, and some of it came from her oncologist. One piece of advice was to be careful with online support groups. Her explanation used a restaurant. If a meal is great, most people do not rush online to post a glowing review. If it was horrible, they do. Some cancer groups on Facebook and social media work the same way, she said: “misery loves company.” She left a lot of them and kept a few that she called really awesome.

“I stayed away from Dr. Google,” she said, and she was warned about that right up front. She noted that Dave knows the feeling from his own research, how you can go down so many rabbit holes. Her approach was to avoid it and let her doctors tell her what to expect.

It fits how we try to work at the clinic, too. If you have a question about your own situation, the best person to ask is the clinician who has actually examined you.

Tough mothers, and why not me

Maria said both of their mothers had a very high tolerance for pain, and that she and her siblings had no choice but to be tough. She also admitted the “why me” never fully goes away. Her answer to it was practical. She was working part time at a winery when she was diagnosed, so she had the time to be sick and the time to go to treatment, while her siblings all work full time. “So why not me if it had to be one of us, let it be me.”

One night, out in the backyard waiting on a dog who sometimes refuses to go to the bathroom, she looked up and asked the universe if everything was going to be okay. A shooting star crossed the sky. “I was like, okay, I think I’m gonna be okay.” Mike asked how much attitude had to do with it. “It’s huge,” Maria said. Mike went a step further and said he could see it as part of why her side effects were milder. That was his impression, offered as his own, and it is not a medical claim anyone on the show made.

Ringing the bell twice, and the radiologist who said too soon

Dave asked the question he had saved: how did it feel to ring the bell? People kept asking whether she would do it after chemo or after radiation. She did both, because she went through two different stages of treatment, and her siblings were there each time. At Roswell, she said, hearing someone ring that bell on her way to an ordinary appointment makes her eyes tear up every time. “And this time it was me.” People in the lobby stopped what they were doing to clap, and strangers came up to congratulate her.

Then came the same feeling she had after tamoxifen. “Oh my gosh, now what?” She had gone there every day for five weeks, and that routine had been her crutch. She still goes back every six months.

She also had a story she said Dave would appreciate. Her radiologist, whom she saw once a week after treatment, walked in on her first day and said, “well, you’re a little glow, you have a little glow to you.” She just looked at him. His follow up was “too soon?” “I get that,” she said. Doctors in that job, as she put it, deal with a lot.

Looking back on the gap between her diagnosis in August and her surgery in October, she said she wanted it out of her right away. Then she reasoned that if it were that bad, they would have fast tracked her into surgery. “I kind of put my faith in my doctors and I put my faith in God,” she said.

Under 40, and why you can’t always feel it

Two things frustrated Maria along the way, and both are about catching cancer early. The first was age. “I met quite a few people under 40 who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and they don’t even want you to have a mammogram until you’re 40,” she said. “Well guess what, people under 40 are getting breast cancer, so something needs to change.”

The second is the one that stays with you. Women have to know their own bodies, she said, but self exams have limits. “Even after they told me exactly where on my breast my tumor was, I couldn’t feel it.”

When screening should start is a conversation for you and your own doctor, and we are a therapy clinic, so we will not pretend to answer it here. If you want to hear it from a specialist, listen to Episode 17 with Dr. Don Goodwin on the podcast page. On that episode he walks through how the US Preventive Services Task Force moved its starting age to 40, why groups like the American College of Radiology say every year from 40, and when ultrasound or MRI gets added to a mammogram. You can also read more about him on his guest page. Episode 18, with dietitian Elyse Marrone and Danielle Armstrong of Pilates Life, picks up the other half: food, movement and recovery during and after treatment.

Elmer, the John Deere, and the joke of the week

Dave had said earlier that he came in with so many things he wanted to ask, “but I’m more interested in listening to you.” He did keep one tradition. Listeners, he said, mostly send him bad dad jokes instead of questions, so he closed with one.

He was at the family’s small lake house in Alabama when he saw his neighbor Elmer bending down next to a John Deere tractor, holding a box of heart shaped chocolates under one arm and flowers in the other. Elmer explained that his wife had lost the glow in her eyes, and a friend had told him what to do: “you got to be more romantic to attract her.” Say it out loud if it takes a second.

Mike said it couldn’t be a better way to wrap it up. There were I love yous on both ends of the Zoom, and the show signed off with a reminder to get your mammograms.

You can read more about Maria on her guest page, listen to the full episode on the Pain 2 Power podcast page, watch it in our video library, or catch the show live Saturdays at 8:30 AM on 100.3 Legends Radio.

We are a physical, occupational and hand therapy clinic on US-1 in North Palm Beach, and cancer care belongs with your oncology team. If you are getting back to everyday life after treatment and something aches, feels stiff, or just won’t cooperate the way it used to, ask your doctor whether therapy makes sense for you, then call us at 561-624-4263. You can read how our physical therapy works, see how we stay with patients through our wellness program once therapy ends, or request an evaluation.

This article is general information, not medical advice. Every situation is different, so please consult a qualified professional about yours.