Amanda Peet reveals breast cancer diagnosis, parents’ deaths
Amanda Peet is not holding back on the hardships she’s experienced since being diagnosed with breast cancer.
In a vulnerable essay published by the New Yorker on March 21, the “Your Friends & Neighbors” actress not only revealed her diagnosis but let the world in on the nuances of her recent tribulations, from confronting her own mortality while coincidentally witnessing her parents dying in hospice care on opposite coasts.
During a routine check-up on Aug. 29, her doctor noticed something odd on an ultrasound, and a biopsy soon identified a small tumor, Peet wrote. Her father died that same Labor Day weekend. “I didn’t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment,” she wrote. “As soon as my dad’s corpse was out of sight, I was free to panic about my cancer again.”
Peet, 54, said she didn’t have it in her to disclose her father’s death or her own cancer diagnosis to her mother, who had late-stage Parkinson’s disease. “She still recognized me, and sometimes answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to my questions, but always reverted to an empty stare.”
She also discussed researching “lobular breast cancer” online, after promising her husband she’d stay off the internet, and fixating on how that form is “tricky” and “insidious” compared to the more common ductal breast cancer. “Even if you’re lucky enough to catch it on a scan, its size is often underestimated. And the kicker: “at 10 years … half as likely to be alive.”
Doctors later discovered a second tumor in the same breast that was determined to be benign, only requiring a lumpectomy and radiation instead of chemotherapy or a mastectomy.
Amanda Peet details the deaths of her parents in hospice
Peet described her father’s death as a typical hospice situation, but said her mother had “a more poetic temperament.”
She recalled seeing her father’s body and feeling guilty that she didn’t cry, but said she experienced a “reprieve from guessing how much longer I had to live.” Her father had been dead for two hours before officials with the Greenwich Village Funeral Home arrived to remove his body and suggested Peet and her sister go to a different room while they moved the body.
“I wasn’t sure whether this was because there might be bodily leakage or because of how disturbing it would be to see the person who’d raised us − whose shoulders we’d ridden on − zipped into a body bag that looked like it came from the props department of ‘Law & Order,’ ” she wrote.
When her mother entered hospice, Peet said she stopped all 23 of her medications and she became emaciated and paralyzed. “When we rolled her onto her side, it was like tipping over a wheelbarrow − her legs stuck straight out of her diaper like hardwood handles. She was plagued with all manner of rashes, sores and ulcers.”
She said she was with her mother during her last moments. Peet arranged her mom’s funeral two weeks after her first clear scan.
Amanda Peet on explaining her diagnosis to her children
The actress also discussed revealing her breast cancer diagnosis to her three children, who she shares with husband David Benioff, including daughters Frances, 19, and Molly, 15, and son Henry, 11.
She followed her therapist’s advice to not worry about appearing strong or unfazed.
“Molly cried, and Frankie − FaceTiming from her college quad − clapped her hand over her mouth and kept it there until she was able to process the excellent portion of the news: that it appeared I was Stage I and wasn’t going to need chemo. Both of them were afraid that we were still withholding information or sugarcoating my prognosis,” she wrote. “My daughters were on the cusp of adulthood. If we were going to remain close, to know each other deeply over the course of a lifetime, we would have to learn how to have difficult conversations.”
Peet’s entire essay is available online at The New Yorker.
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