Amanda Peet is sharing her journey through a series of family health crises. The actress from "Something's Gotta Give" revealed that she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, forcing her to focus on her well-being while her parents were undergoing hospice care.
"For many years, I've been told that I have 'dense' and 'busy' breasts—not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring," she wrote in a New Yorker essay published on March 21. "I've been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups."
However, after a routine scan in late August yielded an unusual ultrasound result, her 54-year-old doctor performed a biopsy, which detected a tumor that "appeared" small but would require an MRI to determine "the extent of the disease."
As Amanda plotted the next steps in her health battle, matters were further complicated as her parents—who had been "long divorced" and lived on "opposite coasts"—began to decline. Her dad passed away suddenly.
"Our mother's battle had started in June, but our father's was only a week in, so we hadn't expected him to go first," she continued. "I flew to New York. I didn't make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment."
Upon returning to Los Angeles, the star of "Your Friends and Neighbors" learned that her illness was thankfully "hormone-receptor-positive" and "HER2-negative," giving her a brief moment of feeling "happier than I'd been pre-diagnosis." Her MRI later revealed a second mass in the same breast, which was eventually determined to be benign and would not require chemotherapy or a double mastectomy.
Amanda concluded her essay by describing her bittersweet farewell with her mom—who battled Parkinson's disease—offering comfort in her final moments.
"The morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision," Amanda recalled. "We locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes."
