Soap opera fans are coming together to help Marnie Schulenburg (ex-Alison Stewart, As the World Turns; ex-Jo Sullivan, One Life to Live), who recently learned that she has stage IV inflammatory breast cancer. The health news is especially difficult right now, as the actress is a new mom, having just welcomed a daughter in December.
A friend group of the actress has set up a Go Fund Me page to help with Schulenburg's medical expenses and other needs, and the page contains more information about the actress' condition and why it wasn't caught at an earlier stage.
"This insidious cancer disguised itself as mastitis, perplexing Marnie's OBGYN, lactation consultants, and a breast specialist when it did not respond to antibiotics, and delaying appropriate cancer treatment for months," states the fundraising page. "Why wasn't cancer brought up as a possibility during those months? Between the challenges of healthcare in a pandemic and the fact that this type of breast cancer affects only 1-5% of all breast cancer diagnoses, it is not the first thing that comes to most practitioners' minds. This cancer mainly targets younger women who are assumed to be at a lower risk for breast cancer, and when it does finally show up in a mammogram, it is already either at stage III or stage IV, having spread to lymph nodes or beyond."
The page goes on to explain that inflammatory breast cancer is incredibly aggressive and has already spread past Schulenburg's lymph nodes and into her sternum. It also isn't receptive to hormone therapies, meaning her cancer treatments -- a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy -- need to attack her entire body.
Says the Go Fund Me page, "The immunotherapy medication is critical to the actress' treatment plan and is still undergoing clinical trials, which equals greater cost to [her husband] Zack and Marnie as insurance will not fully cover it. Right now there is no known cure for metastatic cancer, so Marnie and Zack have a long journey ahead of them as they seek the combination of medications that will suppress her cancer and allow her to continue to live her life to its fullest. The unforeseeable costs that come with this diagnosis are indefinite."
The actress has already gone through her first round of chemotherapy and made a video expressing her gratitude toward her fans and supporters before she loses all of her hair in future chemo rounds.
[We wanted] to thank you and express our immense gratitude for everything that you've done for us since we shared our diagnosis," the actress says in the video. "For your mobilization, for your generosity, for sharing your experiences and energy and stories and thoughts and prayers and for your thoughtful gifts... We've just been truly blown away by the magnitude of it all. It just keeps coming, and because of that, it's able to put my mind at ease, knowing that we are at the beginning of a very long fight. And knowing that we have our community and our support behind us, especially to help my family during this really hard time, is just a big weight off our shoulders. So, thank you so much to those who have donated and helped, thank you to those past, present, and future. We are eternally grateful -- and we are excited to kick this cancer's ass!"
Schulenburg's friends urge fans to share the actress' Go Fund Me page not only to support the actress and her family, but also to remind people to listen to their intuition when something feels off with their body -- young women especially -- and that it is important to advocate for your own health.
Schulenburg made her daytime debut as Alison Stewart on The Young and the Restless in 2007. She took the character to As the World Turns later that same year and stayed in Oakdale until 2010. The actress is also known for her roles in Royal Pains, The Good Wife, Tainted Dreams, and One Life to Live, where she played the character of Jo Sullivan in 2013.
Schulenburg's husband, Zack Robidas, is also an actor who is known for his roles on Succession, Sorry for Your Loss, and Friends from College.
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