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Worcester’s Alicia Witt reveals cancer diagnosis, treatment after death of parents
"These last six months have been the absolute strangest i could ever have imagined."
Despite a tough year, Alicia Witt is counting her blessings.
On May 25, the Worcester native and actress announced she that she was recovering from a unilateral mastectomy.
“These last six months have been the absolute strangest i could ever have imagined,” the author and singer/songwriter wrote on Instagram. “and amidst this, the biggest of blessings.”
After returning to her home in Nashville in the fall following a 14 city book and album release tour, she received a biopsy on a lump in her breast that she had been trying to schedule for months.
Despite being “told by multiple practitioners, including the one who performed my biopsy, [that it] was ‘likely’ nothing to worry about,” Witt was soon diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer.
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On Dec. 1, she had the first of six rounds of chemotherapy.
Later that month, she received the heartbreaking news that her parents, Robert Witt, 87, and Diane Witt, 75, had died in their Worcester home due to exposure to the cold.
Despite her cancer diagnosis, Witt said she was grateful for how much science and research had advanced over the last 25 years, adding that she was “thinking of my grandma loretta, my dad’s mom, who did not survive her diagnosis, leaving me just one beautiful memory of her beaming her beautiful smile at me when i was 3.”
“Thinking, based on what i know of her experience (although this is not yet proven to be a genetic form) she likely had the same type,” Witt continued. “Feeling angels all around.”
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Witt went on to provide an overview of her journey, saying that she took natural supplements in addition to receiving chemical therapies.
In a Wednesday Instagram post, Witt shared a video of herself recorded about two months ago, showing her unable to hide her huge smile as she strikes a gong to celebrate the end of her last round of chemotherapy.
“Although we didn’t yet know for absolute certain until after the mastectomy that the disease was completely healed from my left breast, this marked the end of my carboplatin/taxotere, + herceptin/perjeta (the latter two are immunotherapies which will continue, per protocol for HER2+, through the end of this year),” the actress wrote.
Witt added that she was grateful to the people around her who supported her through treatments and respected her wish to keep the diagnosis private. Additionally, she shared her gratitude for Penguin Cold Cap Therapy, a scalp cooling process that minimizes hair loss and that she said allowed her to maintain some privacy while she was going through treatments, especially since so many eyes were on her following the loss of her parents.
“For me, this was such a needed part of my healing – particularly given the horribly public tragedy that had happened in our family just as i was beginning my treatments,” Witt wrote.
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