She Beat Breast Cancer and COVID
This story originally ran in the October 2020 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.
At first she thought it was the chemotherapy that was making her feel so awful. Two days after breast cancer patient Jodi Cali, a 47-year-old hairstylist in Staten Island, New York, had her first treatment, she felt like she had “run a race outside in the cold”; her chest was so tight, she could hardly breathe. It must be the port, she thought. And the aching joints, the headaches, the nausea—that must be the drugs. Her doctors agreed. “Symptoms of nausea, headaches, and aching joints can all be related to side effects of chemotherapy,” says Maryann Kwa, MD, a medical oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, who is treating Cali, and an assistant professor of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. This was in late February 2020, when New Yorkers were still going into offices and schools and boarding airplanes without masks, before all Americans had memorized the symptoms of Covid-19.
At the time, Cali was still processing the events of the past year and a half. In July 2018, after her annual mammogram, her doctors had alerted her to some “shadowing” on the scan, reminded her that she had dense breast tissue, and said they wanted to keep an eye on her. Later that month, Cali and her husband of 24 years decided to separate, and in January 2019, she opened her own salon. Cali was focused on being a mom (the youngest of her three children, William, was 12 at the time), supporting her family financially, and improving her health. She threw herself into exercise, especially weight lifting, and felt stronger than ever. “I was on a new path,” she says. For the first time since turning 40, she missed a mammogram.
Then, just before Christmas 2019, Cali felt a lump in her right breast and two more under her arm. In January 2020, doctors found six masses in her breast and diagnosed her with stage III ductal carcinoma, an advanced form of invasive breast cancer. She was prescribed chemotherapy to shrink the tumors, to be followed by a mastectomy to remove them as well as surrounding breast tissue and lymph nodes.
Cali was prepared for the miseries of chemo, but when her headaches, nausea, and fatigue wouldn’t let up, she started wondering whether something else might be going on. Her best friend, who had watched William while Cali was in and out of the cancer center for appointments, told Cali that her husband was also sick; the couple got tested for Covid-19. A few days later, Cali decided to get tested, too; she was told results would take 14 days. In the meantime, she found out she had the flu.
It was now the second week of March 2020, and the coronavirus dominated the news—in fact, it was all anyone in New York talked about. Cali was scared for herself, but even more worried about making her kids sick, potentially with the coronavirus. Her parents, who had come up from Florida to help her through chemo, decided to leave, and Cali sent William with them. She asked her daughter Julia, 21, to remain at college; Jacquelyn, 22, a nurse’s assistant, stayed with a friend.
As New York City shut down, Cali quarantined alone at home. Her joints were in agonizing pain; she felt foggy-brained and exhausted. Still, she made herself take walks and get on her Peloton bike. She reached a point where she could barely move her arms and legs and had to crawl around her house, but still managed to nourish herself with smoothies and bone broth. “There were three nights when I really didn’t think I was going to make it. I said to God, ‘Either take me or make me better.’” The morning after the third night, she woke up with a temperature of 103 and drove to Staten Island University Hospital South, where Jacquelyn worked. That might have saved her life: She’d developed pneumonia. The doctors prescribed Tamiflu and antibiotics and sent her home to rest. Shaken, Cali asked her daughters to come stay with her. In the last week of March, she started feeling better. Ironically, that’s when her Covid-19 test came back positive.
Six weeks after her first chemo session, Cali was able to resume her treatment (while wearing a mask and following the hospital’s social-distancing guidelines, of course), and then she stayed on track for the remaining 15 infusions. The chemo was intense, and the effects of the coronavirus lingered: She continued to experience tightness in her chest and still had breathing issues. While she had Covid-19, she lost her sense of taste and smell; now, because of the chemo, everything she eats “tastes like chemicals” (a common side effect of one of the meds, confirms Kwa).
But all through her treatment she was able to exercise, and when New York City hair salons were allowed to reopen that June, she felt well enough to return to doing cuts and color while masked and shielded. “I’m so busy at work—it’s nice to feel needed,” she says. Her mastectomy is scheduled for mid-September; she plans to have reconstructive surgery then, too. Her oncologists are impressed by her incredible resilience. “With her continued focus on staying active and healthy, Jodi pushed herself in a good way,” says Kwa. “I wish all my patients could do that during treatment! We know exercise can help with fatigue and can boost a physical sense of well-being.”
Looking back, Cali credits her family, friends, and doctors with helping her stay strong during illness and treatment. But in her darkest hour, she had to take care of herself. “When you first get the cancer diagnosis, you think, This is the end,” she says. “Then they told me it hadn’t spread, and I let myself feel that I was going to be okay. So I guess when Covid hit, I just wasn’t ready to give up.”
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