Geldi Abrera was having a good time. In March 2023, she flew to the glamorous Caribbean island of St. Barters to help a friend prepare for their 10th wedding anniversary. That’s when she got a call from her gynecologist in Miami. “Why did he call me?” “He never called me,” the 47-year-old Real Housewives of Miami star recalled thinking.
Concerned, she immediately contacted her husband of 22 years, Russell Abrera. Ms. Russell, 47, a captain with the Miami Fire Department, asked her husband to answer the phone with her. Turns out the results of Abrera’s annual mammogram just came back.
“‘ Yes, you have breast cancer, but you caught it in time and are now at stage zero. Abrera recalled the doctor saying, “‘ You don’t need chemo. You’re gonna be okay. ‘”
But soon it wasn’t that simple. A subsequent MRI revealed that Abrera had an invasive tumor in her left breast, newly diagnosed as stage 1B estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (meaning the cancer cells use estrogen to grow). Ten weeks later, she underwent surgery to remove the tumor and had a lumpectomy.
Further examination revealed a 36 per cent chance of the cancer returning. Over the next five months, Abrera underwent four rounds of chemotherapy, followed by 20 more rounds of radiation. “I was like, ‘Can it get any worse? This is the worst thing ever. ‘” she recalls. “It was like riding a roller coaster, and you just wanted to get off.” After careful consideration, the founder and CEO of global wedding planning company Geldi Designs decided to share her cancer battle with fans of The Real Housewives of Miami. In the show’s sixth season, TV cameras captured many emotional moments, including Russell shaving her head and the couple struggling to reveal Abrera’s diagnosis to their two sons, Miles, 17, and Liam, 12.
“Now more than ever, I want to talk about it.” “I’m the ‘cancer girl,’ if you want to call it that,” Abrera said. God told me I was going to be the messenger for this.”
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