3rd Elise Midili Breast Cancer Battle & Brewery 5K

A Letter From Elise:

December 2020
I rang the bell for the first time back in December after my 6th and final round of chemo. To be honest, I mostly did it for my husband who couldn’t be there because of COVID. He wanted me to ring it because he was proud of me and he had seen how hard I struggled so I had the nurses take a video for him to see. But at that time I was weak, exhausted and defeated both physically and emotionally. It took weeks before I even started to feel better. I remember going home that day and crying because I wanted to feel like it was “over” but it wasn’t. Besides the chemo knocking me down, I still had to get through my double mastectomy.

The physical and emotional recovery of that was another huge mountain to climb. We also had to wait until surgery was complete before we found out what my body’s response to chemo was (it was great – thank God for science.) The need for radiation was also to be determined at that time depending on surgery pathology results. I still needed to complete a full year of targeted therapy infusions every 3 weeks. So, in December of 2020 it felt like I was only halfway there – if that.

September 2021
On September 9th, I officially finished my treatment and I rang the bell again with Mike by my side (I tried to tell him to save his vacation day for something fun but he refused ). We closed this chapter together. This time I feel truly proud of everything I have overcome. I am still healing but feel more and more like myself as each day passes. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my friends and family and of course my amazing team of doctors and nurses at Penn who took care of me like I was a member of their family. I will forever be grateful for everyone that took time out of their day to check in on me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope someone sees me ringing this bell and knows they too can get there even if it seems like the day will never come. You are so much stronger than you know.