<\/p>\n
Amanda Peet<\/strong><\/a> is opening up about her health.<\/p>\n In a new essay published in The New Yorker<\/a><\/em> on Saturday (March 21), the 54-year-old Your Friends & Neighbors<\/em> actress revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer \u201clast fall.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep reading to find out more\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u201cFor many years, I\u2019ve been told that I have \u2018dense\u2019 and \u2018busy\u2019 breasts \u2014 not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring,\u201d Amanda<\/strong> wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cI had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups,\u201d she continued. \u201cThe Friday before Labor Day, I went for what I thought would be a routine scan.\u201d<\/p>\n Her physician \u201cdidn\u2019t like the way something looked on the ultrasound,\u201d and, as a result, wanted her to undergo a biopsy.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That\u2019s when I knew,\u201d Amanda<\/strong> recalled, noting that her doctor shared the results the next day. \u201cThe tumor \u2018appeared\u2019 to be small, but I would need an MRI after the holiday weekend to determine \u2018the extent of disease.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n As Amanda <\/strong>waited to discover the type of cancer she had, her parents were both on hospice care.<\/p>\n \u201cOur parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts,\u201d Amanda<\/strong> wrote, referring to her sister. \u201cOur mother\u2019s had started in June, but our father\u2019s was only a week in, so we hadn\u2019t expected him to go first. I flew to New York. I didn\u2019t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n Amanda<\/strong> returned home to Los Angeles to consider caring for her mother when she learned that her stage 1 cancer \u201chormone-receptor-positive\u201d and \u201cHER2-negative.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was happier than I\u2019d been pre-diagnosis, when I was just a regular person who didn\u2019t have cancer,\u201d Amanda<\/strong> wrote. \u201cBut after about 10 minutes, I remembered that I still needed the MRI and regressed to baseline terror. [My doctor,] Dr. K., said that the radiologist would check my lymph nodes, as well as \u2018the left side for any surprise findings\u2019 and call with the results within a week. It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.\u201d<\/p>\n Doctors soon discovered a second benign mass in Amanda<\/strong>\u2018s breast, requiring a lumpectomy and radiation as treatment.<\/p>\n This past January, Amanda<\/strong>\u2018s mother died, shortly after her own \u201cfirst clear scan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision,\u201d Amanda<\/strong> recalled of her final moments with her mom. \u201cWe locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n She continued, \u201cI thought of my teen improv class, which she had found for me when we moved back to New York from London. In improv, even if the given circumstances defy logic, you and your scene partner have to stick to them. I wasn\u2019t sure whether my mom knew that she was looking at me or whether I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes. I said \u2018howdy doodle\u2019\u2014that\u2019s how she often greeted me. But then I realized that she was communing without words, and I followed suit. Time was running out, and, besides, I had already told her everything.\u201d<\/p>\n You can read Amanda<\/strong>\u2018s full essay at NewYorker.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n