Erica Fontes’s Story

How has breast cancer affected your life?

Erica Fontes lost her mother, Alice, to breast cancer.

Alice was first diagnosed when Erica was in seventh grade. At the time, it was stage one breast cancer, and the recommended treatment was a lumpectomy and radiation. Alice went through treatment, stayed on top of her appointments, and for years, breast cancer stayed in the background.

Years later, Erica had gone back to school to become a nurse and had just moved to Baltimore for her first nursing job at Johns Hopkins. That same year, her mother retired.

Alice began having issues with her kidney. Doctors tried different approaches, including a stent, before deciding the kidney was not functioning well and should be removed.

When they removed it, they found breast cancer cells.

That was how they learned the breast cancer had returned. It had not come back in the breast. It was in Alice’s kidney, liver, and pancreas.

At that point, it was stage four.

 

What was it like to be a daughter and a nurse during your mom’s illness?

For Erica, being a nurse while her mother was sick brought a complicated kind of heartbreak.

She was not an oncology nurse, but she knew enough to understand what her mother would likely have to go through. Alice encouraged Erica not to move back home, but hearing “stage four” changed everything.

“It was just heartbreaking for me knowing what I knew,” Erica says.

When Alice eventually went on hospice, Erica was the one giving her medication.

That came with a lot of guilt.

“You want to be a daughter,” Erica says, “but you also have to be like her nurse.”

Alice never asked that of her. In fact, she would tell Erica not to mention that she was a nurse. But Erica still found herself carrying both roles: the daughter who loved her mother and the nurse who understood what was happening.

 

How does your mom’s experience affect you now?

Because of her mother’s diagnosis, Erica has been getting screenings every six months since she was 31.

At first, that was very anxiety-provoking. Now, it has become something she knows she has to do, especially as a mother herself.

“I have children,” Erica says.

Still, when Erica meets someone her age or younger who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, it hits her deeply. Even while doing everything she can, she knows how quickly life can change.

Her mother’s experience has also shaped the way Erica moves through her nursing career.

Alice hid her illness well. Between the wigs, makeup, and the way she carried herself, people often would not have known what she was facing.

That has stayed with Erica.

“You just never know what battle somebody has behind closed doors,” she says.

As a nurse, Erica tries to remember that. She tries to give people grace, and she also tries to give herself grace when that feels difficult.

 

Why are you walking with Runway this year?

This year marks 10 years since Alice passed away.

Erica learned about Runway through Crystal, her coworker, and was drawn to the fact that Runway does something different. So often, Erica had heard of organizations raising money for a cure. Runway’s focus on helping families immediately felt meaningful to her.

Erica feels grateful that she had her mother until she was 34. She knows she was able to make memories with her, including going wedding dress shopping before she was even engaged.

But she also thinks about people who lose their mothers much younger and cannot imagine how hard that must be.

Walking with Runway is Erica’s way of honoring her mother after 10 years.

“I talk about her to my kids because they’ve never met her,” Erica says. “They always say if you talk about somebody, you still keep them alive.”

For Erica, this is a way to keep Alice’s memory alive.

 

Who was Alice?

Alice was thoughtful, funny, opinionated, loving, and always thinking ahead.

Every year on Erica and her brother’s birthdays, Alice would tell them their birth stories. Before she died, she recorded both stories so they would still have them every year.

When she knew she was nearing the end of her life, she made sure Erica would still have what she needed. She sent Erica her brother’s birth story and asked her to make sure he got it on his birthday.

Alice also helped Erica choose her wedding dress, even though Erica was not engaged yet.

It was a full-circle moment for them.

When Erica was younger, she and her mother had once fought over a First Communion dress. Alice joked that if Erica was going to “look like a floozy” at her First Communion, then Alice would get the final say on her wedding dress.

Years later, knowing Alice had only weeks left, Erica called bridal salons and explained that her mother was dying and she needed to try on dresses, even though she did not yet have a wedding date.

They found the dress together.

Alice also wrote a speech for Erica’s future wedding, assuming Erica and Rich, now her husband, would one day get married.

On Erica’s wedding day, her father realized he had forgotten his glasses and insisted they turn the trolley back around to get them. Erica did not understand why he needed them so badly until he stood up to give his speech.

He was reading Alice’s words.

Alice had written a speech for the wedding she would not be there to attend, making sure her love would still be present in the room.

“That’s just the type of person my mom was,” Erica says.

 

What are we celebrating this year?

This year, we are celebrating the love that does not disappear after loss. 

We will cheer Erica on as she walks the Runway stage 10 years later in honor of the mother she will always carry with her.