Cancer just won't deter Kailua mom

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Nine-year-old Nicolas "Nico" Viarnes, a third-grader at Le Jardin Academy, slides his math homework across the kitchen table to his mother. "This one's wrong and so are these," she tells him after checking off three problems at the bottom of the page.

Francesca Viarnes gets kisses from husband Alex, and their two children, Nico, 9, and Nora, 3. Viarnes discovered a lump in her breast in December; six weeks later her doctor confirmed that she had breast cancer. She now undergoes twice-a-month chemo treatments. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

With Mother's Day approaching, the young boy is thankful for any time his mother feels well enough to do the kinds of daily activities she used to do with him and his

3-year-old sister, Nora, before she was diagnosed with breast cancer in late January.

Kailua resident Francesca Viarnes, who celebrated her 39th birthday on March 8, has had two surgeries for her "invasive ductal carcinoma" — one to remove a 2-inch lump and another to clean out the affected area — and has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments, scheduled on two successive weeks each month.

"I love my mom," Nico Viarnes said. "I admire her for how she's going through all this ... and fighting it. She's going to win with perseverance."

Between chemo treatments, Francesca Viarnes tries to maintain a normal lifestyle, which for her is active.

She spends one day a week at the Nu'uanu studio of her commercial photographer husband, Alex, doing marketing work. Viarnes also serves as den mother for her son's Cub Scout troop, does volunteer work at his school and attends his Kailua Little League and Aulea Swim Club events as well as being Mom to her daughter.

"One reason it's easy for me to stay on task of being with my kids is I have the support of friends, neighbors and family," Francesca Viarnes said. "On chemo days, I have friends who pick up Nico from school, take him to baseball or swimming. Friends and neighbors prepare meals for us three times a week.

"I have a lot of people mothering me," she added, noting how important support is for people in her condition.

Viarnes discovered the lump during a self-check in December, after she had stopped breast-feeding her daughter.

"It appeared all of a sudden," she said, conscious of the danger sign since her mother and mother-in-law had breast cancer. "I thought it might be a blocked milk duct but it didn't go away."

After seeking opinions and advice, she went to see her doctor six weeks later. The diagnosis was confirmed on a Friday afternoon in late January and surgery was scheduled the following Monday.

"That weekend was hard," she recalled. "We had to tell the children. We told our son first that something was growing and it was cancer. He didn't cry but the word cancer threw him. It's a powerful word.

"I didn't want anyone to see me cry because it was important to me to keep everything together," Viarnes added. "But I've had two children in my life, that's it. Never a surgery. Cancer is such a big word because everybody knows what it is yet there's so much we don't know about it."

Viarnes has to have twice-a-month chemo treatments for another three months or so.

"I don't know what's coming but I do know the best outcome for me is doing what I can do everyday," she said.

The statistics for breast cancer, which affects both men and women, are alarming: One in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime and an estimated 203,500 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Viarnes is determined to be one of 2 million survivors in the nation.

"It's getting younger, reaching people like me," she said. "They don't know yet how to tell the difference between people who are going to die and those who will survive. They're trying to figure that out.

"Research is the only way to make this thing go away."

Viarnes is encouraging support of a breast cancer fund-raising effort this week by McDonald's Restaurants in Hawai'i. From now through Mother's Day tomorrow, McDonald's is selling $1 pink paper ribbons and displaying them with donor's names on them. From Friday through Sunday, the restaurants will also be selling three pink-ribbon sugar cookies for $1.

All proceeds from the ribbon and cookie sales will go to breast cancer research at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif.

Reach Rod Ohira at 535-8181 or rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.