How Black Love Helped These Women In Their Fight Against Breast Cancer

In the spring of 2016, 29-year-old Natasha Ewa was a beaming bride-to-be just a few months away from walking down the aisle to marry her fiance, Kenneth. But the wedding planning stalled when she discovered a lump in her right breast. Natasha told HelloBeautiful that despite the size of the movable mass, she wasn’t jarred by it, initially. But she made an appointment with her OB-GYN to have someone check it out.

“My OB sent me to a radiologist for an ultrasound, and I will never forget it to this day. The radiologist, he kind of just looked at me, and he was like, ‘Why are you here?’”

Taken aback by his nonchalance, Natasha said she showed him the mass and urged him to take it seriously. But after he completed the ultrasound, he told Natasha he didn’t see anything, and that she had “nothing to worry about.” Natasha was instructed to come back in a year. While she wasn’t comfortable with the doctor’s orders, Natasha said at the time, she just wasn’t educated enough about breast cancer to know the red flags (now, there are tools like Google’s AI technology, that can help demystify breast cancer screening and help patients find resources.)

Still not thinking the lump could be cancerous, Natasha said she continued to bury herself in work and wedding planning, but in the back of her mind,  she knew once the wedding was over, she was going to find out what was causing that lump.

Natasha and Kenneth went on to wed November 5th, 2016 in Rhode Island, seven years after she met her future husband at a rocking party in New York City. She said she and Kenneth are the type of couple who, “if they’re playing Afrobeats or reggae or whatever, we are the two that are on the dance floor, swishing our feet, and nobody else exists.” Fresh newlyweds, the two disappeared into their own blissful dance party for only a week before a shocking discovery stopped the music. While they were hanging out in bed one night, Natasha said Kenneth felt the lump again and said, “Babe, this thing is a lot larger than it was two months ago.”

Natasha went back to her OB-GYN, this time with a renewed fire to get answers. She said at the time, she only shared what was going on with her husband — no friends or family had any clue what she was wrestling with. She said the doctor told her again to come back in a year, but she insisted on being seen. When her OB-GYN suggested she go back to the same radiology team that dismissed her the first time, she demanded to be seen by other radiologists.

“I said, ‘If you do not send me to someone different, not only will I find that someone else on my own, but I will wreak havoc in your office,” Natasha told HelloBeautiful. “And the only thing I could attribute that to is God. Because to this day, I have no reason why I had that kind of attitude,” she said.

Natasha eventually fired her OB-GYN and started seeing a new doctor, who immediately took her seriously and performed another ultrasound. Natasha said he pointed out the dark area on the screen and ordered a biopsy immediately. “How dare that radiologist tell you there was nothing there,” the doctor said.

Natasha was diagnosed with stage 2, estrogen receptor-positive, HER2 negative breast cancer. The doctor told Natasha that even though she was stage two, given the grade of cancer and the speed at which it was dividing, if she had waited a year for a follow up, she would not have survived. By the time she had her initial bilateral mastectomy to remove the cancer, Natasha said the lump had ballooned to the size of a golf ball.

After Natasha received the devastating news, she said she was “emotionally frozen” as she sat in the car crying. After moving through waves of grief alone, she said she eventually texted Kenneth and revealed her diagnosis. Eventually, she managed to drive herself home to face her new husband in person.

“The moment I walked into the house, he just looked at me. He just gave me a hug, and he said, ‘Just lay with me and cry.’” And then the journey began — and their vows to be devoted through sickness and health kicked in just one week into their lifetime together.

Sickness, at any point in a relationship, is a pressure cooker that tests the commitment of any couple. But for Kenneth and Natasha, the pressure produced diamonds that would serve as a rock-solid foundation for their marriage.

Natasha said after surgery and reconstruction, the first time she took off the bandages, she didn’t know how to process what she was seeing, but her husband’s comforting words soothed her insecurities around her new body.

“I don’t remember his exact words, but I just remember him hugging me and saying, ‘I need you to know that they still look good. I need you to know that I don’t care if one nipple is facing Dubai and the other one is facing California. They look good, They look fine. You are beautiful. You are still the same person,” Natasha said. Natasha credits her husband’s courageous devotion as the key to her recovery.

Stephanie Royal

Like Natasha, Stephanie Royal told HB that her partner, John, was a guiding light through the darkness of the COVID pandemic when she was forced to undergo emergency surgery to remove leaking implants she got post-mastectomy a decade prior.

John and Stephanie, who first dated in the late 80s, reunited a few years after Stephanie divorced her first husband. Stephanie said in the summer of 2011, she was day-drinking with her girls by the sunny shores of Martha’s Vineyard, champagne tipsy, chatting about her favorite exes when John came to mind. John and Stephanie were young, twenty-somethings, just starting their careers in New York City when they met and started dating. Stephanie said when John wanted her to meet his family, she got spooked by how serious the relationship got so fast and ghosted him. But now, as a recent divorcee, and also a few years post-op after having a preventative mastectomy and reconstruction after she discovered she was at extreme risk for breast cancer given her immediate family history (her mom, grandma, and aunt had all had breast cancer), Stephanie said she was open to a fresh start.

“I was like, where is he?” She said about John between sips of Cosmos. “And by this time, we had Facebook and things like that, but I could never find him.” she said.

But as fate would have it, the next day, Stephanie bumped into John on the street. The two arranged to have a coffee chat, and after hours and hours of conversation, their love flame was re-lit. Stephanie told John that she had had surgery a few years prior, and that she was due for a check-up. John told Stephanie he wanted to come with her to the appointment. Stephanie said when he showed up at the hospital, she was floored.

“He met me there, and he got out of the car and just was so beautiful,” Stephanie said, adding, “And, you know, he was just there to rescue me.” The check-up went fine, and the couple’s relationship blossomed from that point on. By 2014, they officially blended their families and started chapter two of their love story together.

Five years later, Stephanie went to see her doctor in December 2019 for her ten year check-up. Stephanie was hoping for a routine visit, but her doctor flagged that her implants were abnormally raised.

“Well, I just thought this was like my regular cleavage, but it’s just been, you know, it’s been a couple of years. I’ve noticed the shift, but I didn’t really think anything of it,” Stephanie said. But it was serious. The doctor performed a sonogram to investigate the cause and discovered that one of her implants was leaking.

“I was told that my body was poisoning itself,” Stephanie said.

The surgery was originally scheduled for March of 2020, but as New York quickly became the epicenter of the country’s COVID crisis, she was told the surgery was indefinitely postponed. Her doctor told her to do all she could to stay healthy, including giving up drinking and maintaining an exercise routine. But not knowing what was happening in her body, on top of fears surrounding having surgery during the height of a deadly pandemic after losing three close members to the disease, Stephanie said she almost drowned in thoughts of doom.

“So, I’m thinking, alright, so I’m gonna go in. I’m going to have this major invasive surgery and contract COVID. I’m going to die too.” she said.

But it was John that kept her above the waves.

Stephanie said she and John were in a COVID pod of two, and he would literally force her out of the house to keep her from sinking into depression. They walked hand-in-hand through Central Park every day and exercised together to keep Stephanie as healthy as possible as she prepared her body for major surgery.

A few months later, Stephanie’s surgery was rescheduled for July 21, 2020. The morning of the surgery, she had to get undressed at the hospital and sanitize her whole body. She said she and John were given a towel-sized iodine wipe that John used to wash every inch of her body as Stephanie stood there naked in hospital shoes.

“I was crying. Yeah. I just, literally just tears were just dripping. It was like an endless stream of tears because I felt so loved and so cared for,” she told HB.

After surgery, Stephanie had to endure five days in intensive care alone due to COVID precautions. When she was finally cleared to come home, Stephanie described her post-op recovery as “agonizing.” After days of being bed-ridden in extreme pain, Stephanie said she heard John making noise in the hallway, and when she looked to see what he was doing, she realized he was putting together a shower stool for her. After a week of no bathing post-op, it was finally shower day.

“I’m like, I did not think of that. And I, I literally just started crying,” she said.

“Because I’m just so used to taking care of myself, which is kind of my mentality. He thought of this very functional gift. I still have it in the bathroom. Like, I will never get rid of that thing because to me, it was a symbol of his devotion, his care, the way that he thought through everything,” she said.

And John’s care didn’t stop there. He also served as chef, cooking meals and making fresh green juices to help her heal, including CBD cocktails, and leg massages to make sure the blood in her body was flowing properly. And as her scars healed, Stephanie said he looked at them and told her, “These scars are representative of your survival, of your strength, of your power.”

Almost 5 years later, Stephanie says she is healthier than ever. After physical therapy, she started weightlifting, and can now press up to 400 pounds.

“I feel my best. I look my best, I love my body.” Stephanie said. Now she and John are gearing up for their next act, launching a podcast in 2025 called City & Country that details their dynamic lives as a power couple navigating between Harlem’s glitterati and the vast farms of the Hudson Valley.

Natasha was also surprised with a new beginning after her cancer battle — a miracle son that she said she was 5 months pregnant with before she even knew she was expecting. The cancer medication had stopped her period, so she had no idea she was carrying until she went in for an ultrasound and a fully-developed child was staring back at her on the screen.

Natasha said her supportive partner helped her foster hope in the future, which can be hard to envision when you’re hit with an unimaginable crisis.

“When we’re talking about going through something as scary as cancer, sometimes the hope that you need at first may feel superficial. It may feel like, oh, that’s not what’s important. Right now, it’s my survivorship. But part of survivorship is being able to project the potentials of the future,” Natasha said.

Stephanie said the whole ordeal really solidified the lasting power of her partnership with John.

“Our union was so strong that scars would not matter. It just would not matter to him because I was so loved, and I still felt beautiful,” she said.

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