10/16/2025
To all of you with breast cancer and breast cancer survivors, this is a great article from the Price County Review. It isn't comfortable to talk about, but it's reality for some of us. Hope this helps you all as it helped me--a survivor since 2014! --Molly
PRICE COUNTY REVIEW
Breast cancer survivor offers online support network
TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] 10 hrs ago 0
MINOCQUA — Getting a cancer diagnosis and a treatment plan is terrifying to most people and support networks with others who have gone through it themselves are harder to find in rural communities. A nurse who is a cancer survivor herself formed a social media group that is designed to let people acclimate to their reality in their own way and in their own time.
Katie Citta, a post-anesthesia care unit nurse in the surgery department of Marshfield Medical Center in Minocqua, was herself diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2023. The thought that support was crucial was never more clear than after the results of a routine mammogram over lunch came back with orders for biopsies. She broke down into tears and it was her co-workers who picked her up because they knew exactly what was going on.
“I guess it probably made me more vulnerable, but it also gave me 20 more people on my team in my support circle,” Citta said.
The treatment led to a double mastectomy with reconstruction, followed by chemotherapy and then a year of infusions, and more medications to this day.
“At the beginning, when I was diagnosed, meeting other people that had been through it really made me feel like ‘I’ve got this, I’m going to make it okay,’” she said.
One of her supporters was a doctor who lifted up her shirt to show her mastectomy and started to tear up. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years earlier and went through chemotherapy.
“She said, ‘Katie, let me know if you have any questions. That was huge for me because I was still at a point where it was like, is this going to be how I die? Is this my last Christmas? Should I celebrate my birthday? Knowing that there’s people on the other side for me was huge. Knowing that I could ask people questions and that people get through this made me feel like I’m going to be okay.”
That type of support is what helps people looking at a bad few months ahead to know they can face it and get through it, she said. That comfort and support when she was at her most frightened and alone — led to a desire to help others.
“I want people to know they’re not alone,” Citta said.
Just a few weeks after her diagnosis, Citta joined a Facebook group for people with the same type of breast cancer. She has a supportive husband, two teenage children and friends but found that only others going through the same experience could truly relate.
“It’s a whole different kind of fear and anxiety, and you can’t ask friends the questions that you come up with because they’re not going through the same thing,” Citta said.
These relationships helped her to share her worries about her condition and the impact on her personal life. Her son was 15 at the time and was very open emotionally when it came to expressing how he felt, but her 13-year-old daughter was more stoic from having a best friend who lost her mother to cancer eight years earlier.
Her Type A personality led to the idea of creating a local page. One in eight women will get diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives, she said, but did not have access to the support she received as a nurse among medical professionals.
“So that was kind of why we started the group,” Citta said.
Carri Cira, RN, the oncology nurse navigator at MMC-Minocqua, agreed to be the co-administrator of a localized page called Minocqua Area Breast Cancer Support. After meeting women with ovarian, cervical and other cancers, Citta said they also lacked local support and Facebook group agreed to expanding to become Minocqua Area Women’s Cancer Support.
The group is still around 80% breast cancer patients. The group is also limited to cancer patients only, while other groups sometimes allow parents, children, spouses, siblings and extended family to join.
“Which is great,” Citta said. “I’m glad people have people that care enough to ask.”
But in Citta’s group, the women sometimes ask sensitive questions related to all stages of the disease and treatment. They may ask about intimacy issues, about being angry with God, or other personal matters that are not appropriate to talk about when the patient is not present.
The decision to keep the group closed is to provide a safe space to ask any question that they have, which is another reason to keep it to just patients only, she said.
“It is just keeping it more private,” Citta said.
Some of the administrator posts are informational but most inspire hope, courage and strength. The things that let people know it’s OK to have a bad day, or a low strength day, she said.
“Things like that are important too,” Citta said. “You don’t have to be strong and rainbowy and fluffy all the time. You can have crappy days and that’s OK too.”
As the administrator Citta asks how everyone is doing, and if anyone has updates on their treatment or prognosis. She considers herself fortunate for coming through treatment with a “no evidence of disease” prognosis, which is the updated oncology term for “remission” or “cancer free.”
It’s important to have the perspective that cancer may or may not return and it could be fatal the next time around, Citta said. People in the group are at various stages of cancer and some who may just have been diagnosed might not want to post anything for some time and just want to read and absorb what everyone else is going through.
“We end up getting quite a few members who are at that beginning part where it’s terrifying,” Citta said. “You might die, you don’t know. I still might get a reoccurrence in 10 years, and that might be what takes me out.”
A lot of these women are just starting to deal with their diagnosis and so that is why we post those things in the group, not to expect a reply every time, but to give those terrified people in the very beginning something to hold on to while they process.
A good number of the group are passive visitors in the early stages, what she calls the “Facebook stalkers.” Not in a bad sense but to describe the frequent presence without communicating until they are ready.
“They’re watching the page and looking at everything that’s on it, but emotionally they are not ready to participate and for some people that takes a long time,” she said. “When you’re first diagnosed you’re kind of in that window where you don’t know what your treatment plan or prognosis is going to be. It is often a time where a lot of people kind of shut down, like they want the support, but they don’t want to participate.”
Having repeating posts with information about what they are going through and that it’s OK, is a distant source of support until they find their voice and reach out in their own way.
“A good percentage of our group isn’t at a point, mentally, where they want to actively participate,” she said. “I know they’re looking and reading and that it’s probably doing something for them.”
Anonymous comments from the group include one that said “This group, along with the Women’s Day Of Caring events, helps me to learn what my options are for dealing with the ever expanding after effects of cancer treatment. It is reassuring to know that there are resources available in the area to help me address any future recurrence.”
Another comment noted that the group helped with unconditional support from “fellow fighters” who insist that others not be afraid of questions. As everyone is going through so much, she said that at all stages and with different effects, the group was tremendous with having so many people to share their experiences.
“I ended up with a bad infection from my expander during the radiation process and had I not had this group I may have hesitated to go in longer than I did,” the member said. “It probably saved me. I was able to reach out to another local woman who has been very supportive for me throughout the whole process. I think this group is such a wonderful blessing for those of us having this fight of our lives!”
A third member said the group helped, especially right after the diagnosis — a scary time. The group was great in helping to understand the process and answer questions.
“Going through treatment is tough, and can feel very lonely at times, and having a group of people that are going through, or have gone through similar situations is comforting,” the member said. “This group is a great way to share information and support each other!”
As group members get to know one another they hold in-person events such as an arts and crafts project, organized by a cancer survivor at a store hosted by another survivor. Other members go to support another who is going through their first round of chemo — because they remember going through the experience alone, Citta said.
Group members attend each other’s bell ringing’s, including Citta’s last May when she finished chemotherapy, and again in December when all her treatment was completed.
“When you finish your course of treatment, you can ring the bell,” she said. “The ringing of the bell is something that’s a really big deal in cancer treatment.”
Some people may not ever ring the bell because they will be on some type of a maintenance infusion for life, she said. Others who finish active treatment don’t want to ring the bell because they feel like it’s bad luck.
Cancer changes you in many ways and support can help to find a sense of peace from the anxiety of treatment and the unknown future. Not letting that fear run your life is crucial because there are people who are owned by that fear of the recurrence.
“I feel like you have to go on the flip side of that and let the fear maybe motivate you,” Citta said. “It’s about not letting that fear run your life.”
For Citta, dealing with anxiety is about living more in the moment and not putting things off. The family vacation ideas that had been tossed around are now happening, such as a ski trip this winter.
For more information about cancer, resources and support, contact Venette Tess BSM, MHA, the Community Health specialist for Oneida County Health Department and the Wisconsin Well Woman Program serving Oneida, Forest, Florence, Vilas, Price, Iron, Sawyer, Ashland and Bayfield counties at 715-369-6119, or visit oneidapublichealth.org.
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