Faith and Fortitude - Cancer Today

Faith and Fortitude

A cancer survivor embarks on a spiritual journey to Poland and finds inspiration in a local cancer hospital.
By Cynthia Ryan

Just weeks before I met Agnieszka Mitręga in August 2016 at Holy Cross Cancer Center in Kielce, Poland, the 41-year-old mother of six learned that her estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, first diagnosed in the spring, had metastasized to her bones and lungs. I asked Mitręga, whose children range in age from 4 to 22, how she was coping with the news.  

“I have no time to think about it,” says Mitręga, who lives in the town of Pińczów, about 25 miles south of Kielce. Between growing vegetables and rye, tending to the household, and caring for her husband and children on her family’s 32-acre farm, Mitręga admits that, though she worries about the future, she remains “very active” and has “no time to dream about lying around, resting.”

Mitręga assured me that she was “not feeling any pain,” and that her doctor believed “she was in a good place” following a mastectomy, six rounds of chemotherapy and one treatment of radiotherapy. I was in awe of her calm strength and her belief that she would get through her experience with cancer, even though the disease had spread to many parts of her body, including her spine, ribs and likely her pelvis. 

“I am a believer in God,” Mitręga says. “I am Catholic.”

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