Michael and Gio Caruso’s love story began with a lie – or, to be more specific, two lies. It was 2007 and both of them fudged the truth on their Match.com dating profiles. Gio cut her age by two years, saying she was 43 instead of 45, and Michael said he was divorced when, in fact, he was separated at the time. But when they met in real life, they both agreed with each other, forgave each other for not being completely honest and did not quickly drift apart from each other. Two years after meeting, they got married in November 2009.
For the first seven-plus years of their marriage, things went exactly as they had planned. They moved from Texas to New York to be closer to their aging parents, and Michael, who retired from the Navy in 2008, began working as a financial advisor and Xiao continued his career as a 401(k) administrator and advisor. Then one day in January 2017 something strange happened. “I was stretching on the door frame in my house and I felt a tightness under my right breast,” says Michael. “I felt it, and there was a lump there, but I thought it was a lipoma, which is just a benign fatty deposit. I had one removed in my lower abdomen in my 20s, and I assumed that was that, too.”
At Gio’s insistence, Michael went to his primary care physician and was immediately referred for a mammogram and then a biopsy. “We thought it wouldn’t matter and it would just be fatty tissue,” says Xiao. They even boarded a plane to meet Michael’s parents in Florida without worrying too much. But while they were away, she got a call from Michael’s doctor: “I’m sorry, you have stage 2 breast cancer.”
Xiao and Michael went home and doctors began a series of tests, including checking for the BRCA gene mutation to help inform their treatment plan. “His mother was a breast cancer survivor and was positive for the BRCA gene mutation, but no one thought it would be passed on to Michael,” says Xiao. But the test came back positive: Michael had the BRCA2 mutation.
They also tested the tumor to see what type of breast cancer Michael had, and discovered that it was triple-positive. This means it was increasing in response to the hormones estrogen and progesterone, as well as the protein HER2. This meant that his treatment plan would need to be aggressive. “We did a mastectomy on my right breast — it’s a straight incision down to the center of my chest, under my armpit, and they removed the breast tissue,” he says.
He also started chemotherapy. “It was so bad,” says Michael. “I’d get it done on Thursday; by Saturday I wouldn’t be able to do anything, not even get out of bed. By Monday morning I’d be able to get it done – and then I’d have to do it all again on Thursday.” His hair fell out, he was feeling nauseous, he was not sleeping well and he was taking steroids which made his face look swollen.
