Amanda Peet Shares Her Journey with Breast Cancer Diagnosis
In a poignant essay published in The New Yorker, actress Amanda Peet opened up about her breast cancer diagnosis amid a challenging personal backdrop, as both of her parents were in hospice care on opposite coasts. Titled “My Season of Ativan,” the essay sheds light on her emotional journey during this difficult time.
Peet, known for her role in Something’s Gotta Give, had regularly consulted a breast surgeon for checkups. Prior to Labor Day last year, she visited for what she anticipated would be another routine scan. However, the examination took an unexpected turn.
“Dr. K. usually chatted me up while she examined me, but this time she went silent,” Peet recounted. “She told me that she didn’t like the way something looked on the ultrasound and wanted to perform a biopsy. After the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That’s when I knew.”
A preliminary report confirmed the presence of a small tumor, and further testing was required to determine her cancer’s receptor status. “It’s like dogs,” she explained, noting the variety in cancer strains. “You have poodles on one end and, on the other, pit bulls.”
Peet described the anxious moments spent awaiting her test results with her husband, David Benioff, co-creator of Game of Thrones. “I sucked on little chips of Ativan all day, but my blood pressure was so jacked they didn’t even register. Then, at 4:42 P.M., Dr. K. texted: ‘All poodle features!’” After receiving her hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative diagnosis, Peet felt an overwhelming wave of relief.
“You’d think that I had just taken Ecstasy,” she recalled, sharing her moment of happiness despite the diagnosis. “But after about ten minutes, I remembered that I still needed the MRI and regressed to baseline terror … It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.”
Although the subsequent MRI showed no lymph node involvement, a second mass was discovered in the same breast. This finding postponed her scheduled lumpectomy, leading to an MRI-guided biopsy instead.
Peet described the biopsy as “excruciating,” detailing the complexities of the procedure. “Tom and my doctor called coordinates back and forth, as if playing a perverse game of Battleship.” Following the procedure, she was informed that there was a 50-50 chance of finding more cancer.
Ultimately, the additional mass was benign, allowing for a lumpectomy and radiation treatment rather than a more aggressive double mastectomy or chemotherapy. Peet shared that her diagnosis was classified as Stage I.
Reflecting on her radiation experience, she said, “Radiation wasn’t bad compared with Tom’s waffle iron—until the last stretch, when my nipple became charred and blistered, like an over-roasted marshmallow.”
Towards the conclusion of her essay, Peet revealed that she received a clear scan at the start of the year. Two weeks later, following her father’s death, she began making arrangements for her mother’s funeral while being present for her mother in her final days.
“I wasn’t sure whether my mom knew that she was looking at me or whether I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes,” she wrote. “I said ‘howdy doodle’—that’s how she often greeted me. But then I realized that she was communing without words, and I followed suit. Time was running out, and, besides, I had already told her everything.”
