Sharon Tarby’s Story

How has breast cancer affected your life?

Sharon Tarby never thought of herself as strong.

“I was always the baby,” she says. “I would cry over a hangnail.”

But when breast cancer entered her life, Sharon found strength she did not know she had.

“I didn’t think that I was that strong until I had to be,” she says. “I didn’t have a choice.”

How were you diagnosed?

Sharon had a baseline mammogram in 1998 after her OB had a patient diagnosed with stage four breast cancer at 37.

Then, over Memorial Day weekend in 1999, Sharon was in the shower when she felt a lump on the side of her right breast. It was large, about the size of an egg.

That Tuesday, she called her OB. He brought her in right away, found the lump himself, measured it, and sent her directly to the Winchester Breast Center.

There, Dr. Kelly Cornell examined her and told her she did not want to wait to do a biopsy.

“This has all the characteristics of cancer,” she told Sharon.

By Thursday evening, Sharon received the call: she had breast cancer.

 

What happened next?

When Sharon went back to the office, she learned the tumor was three and a half centimeters. Because of its size, her doctor was concerned it may have spread.

At the same time, Sharon shared something important: after 10 years of infertility before having her children, she and her husband did not use birth control. Her doctor ordered a blood test.

Later, Sharon got another call.

She was pregnant.

Sharon was suddenly facing breast cancer while also navigating an unexpected pregnancy, two young children at home, and an overwhelming series of medical decisions.

Her boys were only 7 and 3 years old.

 

What did treatment look like?

Sharon was first treated with a lumpectomy at Mass General. A few days later, she learned the pregnancy had failed due to a blighted ovum, which made it feel, in some ways, as if the decision had been taken out of her hands.

But the first lumpectomy did not get clean margins.

She went back for a second lumpectomy. Again, the margins were not clear.

By August, Sharon was sitting in Dr. Cornell’s office, two months after her diagnosis, still with cancer in her body.

“What I want to do is what I wanted to do from the beginning,” Sharon said. “I want to have a mastectomy.”

Sharon had a mastectomy at the end of August, followed immediately by chemotherapy. She was very sick from chemo and later had complications from her reconstruction that required another surgery.

“It was a good year out of my life,” she says.

There were days Sharon wanted to pull the covers over her head and not get out of bed. But with a 3-year-old running around, she did not have that choice.

Looking back, she thinks that may have been a good thing.

 

How did your experience turn into support for others?

About six months after treatment, a friend asked Sharon to speak with the wife of someone he knew who was going through something very similar: breast cancer with two young daughters around the same age as Sharon’s boys.

At first, Sharon wondered how she could possibly help. She was still crying every time she went into Dana-Farber.

But the conversation happened naturally.

After that, people kept calling.

Friends, people from her children’s school, and others who knew someone newly diagnosed began asking if Sharon would talk with them.

“And here we are,” Sharon says. “I’m still doing it.”

Today, Sharon remains deeply connected to the breast cancer community, including through the Tanner Ta Ta's, where she is very active and continues to support others.

 

What milestones are you celebrating now?

Sharon was diagnosed in 1999.

At the time, her oldest son was finishing first grade. She remembers wondering if she would ever see him get his license, graduate, go to college, get married, or have children.

Today, he is 34, married, and a father.

This past November, Sharon welcomed her first grandchild, a little girl.

“I never thought I would see him get his license or graduate or go to college,” Sharon says. “And now he’s married and he has a child.”

For Sharon, those milestones mean everything.

“I always try to have a little something to look forward to,” she says.

 

Why are you walking with Runway this year?

For years, Sharon had watched her husband give back through his work with the Leukemia Society, including running 20 Boston Marathons and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sharon always felt like she needed a cause too.

Then breast cancer became that cause.

“I think breast cancer found me,” she says. “And that became my cause.”

This year, Sharon put her name in to walk, encouraged by her husband, and was chosen to be part of Runway’s 20th Anniversary Show.

We can't cheer her on!