'I Just Knew'

CHEF MISSY ROBBINS TELLS EDITOR IN CHIEF LAURA BROWN HOW AN EARLY BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS SAVED HER LIFE AND HOW SHE’S LIVING WITH THE DISEASE NOW

- Laura Brown

LAURA BROWN: Let’s go through everything from the beginning when you were diagnosed. Where were you at the time?

MISSY ROBBINS: It was 2017. Lilia [Robbins’s Italian restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn] had been open for a year and a half, and I was in the groove. I went in for a normal mammogram—I was 46 at the time—and they said, “There’s something kind of weird. We’re not really worried about it, but you should come back.” A few weeks later my gynecologist called and asked if I had gone for my follow-up. I told her no, and she said, “You have to go.” They did an ultrasound and kept going over the same spot. I could feel myself getting the sweats. They said, “Wait here. We need to go talk to the doctor.” I was like, “What?”

LB: Oh, man.

MR: They’re just very matter-of-fact. The doctor wanted to take a biopsy, so we did that the next week. My gynecologist called three days later, and when the phone rang, I thought, “I’m screwed.” I just knew. She said, “I’m really surprised, but it’s breast cancer. If it’s OK with you, I already set in motion getting you a doctor for your surgery.” Then it all starts going really fast.

LB: The pragmatics kick in.

MR: Yes. I called my parents, and they were amazing. No one in my family has had cancer. If you come from a family that has never dealt with cancer, you kind of have a movie impression of what it is. You think you’re going into chemo the next day and that death is imminent. But no one mentioned death to me in this entire process. It wasn’t an option. I had a very small tumor that was caught really early; it was Stage 1. I was lucky, and I realize that.