Amanda Peet isn’t shying away from the challenges she’s experienced since being diagnosed with breast cancer.
In a vulnerable essay published in The New Yorker on March 21, the “Your Friends & Neighbors” actress not only revealed her diagnosis, but also let the world know the nuances of her recent struggle with facing her own mortality, while coincidentally witnessing her parents die in hospice care on the other coast.
During a routine checkup on Aug. 29, doctors noticed an abnormality on an ultrasound and quickly identified a small tumor with a biopsy, Pete wrote. Her father died that same Labor Day weekend. “I wasn’t there in time to see my father take his last breath, but I was able to see his body before it was removed from the apartment,” she wrote. “As soon as I could no longer see my father’s body, I never panicked about cancer again.”
Pete, 54, said he didn’t feel like telling his mother, who had terminal Parkinson’s disease, about his father’s death and his cancer diagnosis. “She still recognized me and sometimes answered my questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but always returned to her blank stare.”
She also talked about researching “lobular breast cancer” online after promising her husband she wouldn’t use the internet, dwelling on how “hard to treat” and “insidious” the cancer is compared to the more common ductal breast cancer. “Even if you’re lucky enough to find it on a scan, its size is often underestimated. And the kicker is that in 10 years… your chances of being alive are cut in half.”
Doctors then discovered a second tumor in the same breast, which was determined to be benign, requiring only a lumpectomy and radiation instead of chemotherapy or a mastectomy.
Amanda Peet details her parents’ deaths in hospice
Pete described his father’s death as a typical hospice situation, but said his mother had a “more poetic disposition.”
She recalled feeling guilty for not crying when she saw her father’s body, but said it “freed me from second-guessing how much longer I had to live.” Her father said that two hours after the death, Greenwich Village Funeral Home staff arrived to remove the body and suggested that Pete and his sister go to another room while they removed the body.
“I didn’t know if this was because my body might be leaking, or how unsettling it was to see the person who raised us, the person we were riding on his shoulders, zipped up in a body bag that looked like it came from the prop department of ‘Law & Order,'” she wrote.
When his mother entered hospice, Pete said she was taken off all 23 medications and became emaciated and paralyzed. “When we laid her on her side, it was like an overturned wheelbarrow. Her legs were sticking straight out of the diaper, like hardwood handles. She had all sorts of rashes, sores and ulcers.”
She said she was with her mother in her final moments. Pete arranged his mother’s funeral two weeks after the first clear scan.
Amanda Peet explains her diagnosis to children
The actress also spoke about revealing her breast cancer diagnosis to her three children with husband David Benioff, including daughters Frances, 19, and Molly, 15, and son Henry, 11.
She followed her therapist’s advice not to worry about appearing strong or unfazed.
“Molly cried, and Frankie (FaceTimed from her college quad) put her hand over her mouth and held her there until she could process the better part of the news. Apparently I was Stage I and wouldn’t need chemotherapy. They were both worried that we were still hiding information or that we were spoiling my prognosis,” she wrote. “My daughters are on the verge of adulthood, and if we are to remain close and know each other deeply throughout our lives, we must learn how to have difficult conversations.”
Pete’s full essay is available online at The New Yorker.
