Mom living with metastatic breast cancer shares her survival story
LEVITTOWN, Nassau County (WABC) -- A woman living with metastatic breast cancer on Long Island has survived after years of treatment.
At just 38, Adina Perullo tested positive for the BRCA2 mutation.
Eyewitness News first met her in 2019 when she was stage 2 and we have sat down with her four times now over the last three years to document her journey.
Perullo is a mother of two boys, ages 6 and 8, in Levittown and has already taken far more than most of us.
As she learns to live with cancer, she is also advocating for more funding.
This past year, Perullo got to see her older son make the top tier hockey team. Her younger son is doing far better in school.
For Perullo, it's been more like a rollercoaster as four of her medications failed.
"This year, the cancer did travel to my spine, it was previously contained to my liver, now it's in my liver and my spine," Perullo said.
That led to hopelessness, but she didn't choose to live in that space. And miraculously this week, better tests results came in after taking yet another medication.
"The news that I got this week was that my tumor markers have decreased significantly by 250 points," Perullo said.
Those in the medical community have suggested that new, targeted therapies will continue to prolong many lives.
"It's really been a seismic shift in how we manage metastatic breast cancer in the last couple of years," Dr. Arif Kamal of the American Cancer Society said.
For Perullo, there are no guarantees -- just the lesson in how to live this year by enjoying trips to Disney World and Iceland.
She is wearing her wigs like the many hats women wear as moms, always answering her sons' questions along the way.
"I wonder about it like, if anything hurts, when she does all this medical stuff," Perullo's son Luca said.
"And we live by the mantra that today, mommy's OK, today, mommy's OK," Perullo said.
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