Imagine being diagnosed with cancer. The day is interrupted with a phone call from the doctor’s office: The tumor is aggressive, stage three. Chemotherapy, radiation and
surgery are the next options.
Unfortunately, most people know at least one person who has experienced that unreal interruption of the everyday. Such as Celeste Peterson, who had to face the fact that it wasn’t her imagination, and that she, at the very young and healthy age of 31, had
breast cancer.
“That day was surreal — really hard to believe, especially me being who I am. I’m young and healthy. I was the last person anyone expected that to happen to. I heard from my surgeon over the phone and I was actually at work on a break,” Peterson remembered. “He sort of asked if I was sitting down, and at that point, I knew exactly what it was about.”
But Peterson, now 33, was energized by her love of her family and her passion for dance, and decided to mirror her aggressive cancer by tackling it immediately with all the appropriate treatments available.
“My initial reaction was ‘OK, what do we have to do? Let’s get started.’ I’m a mother, so I wanted to do whatever we had to do. I knew we were just going to take care of it. There weren’t any other options for me. I wasn’t even going to consider letting it take me down,” she said.
Peterson came to Eugene and the University from a small town in Minnesota to study dance in 1997. Three years later, she was a senior facing the all-too-familiar doubt of what she actually wanted to be when she grew up.
“I was in a spot in my life where I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with a dance major. I always knew I wanted to dance my whole life, but I wasn’t seeing where it was
going at that point,” she said.
She left the University and pursued her other passion working as a seamstress for concert and theater events at venues around Eugene. She got a job in the alterations shop at David’s Bridal, found and wed her own husband, and had a baby boy in that time.  
But two years ago, in August of 2008, her relatively simple life got much more complicated with a diagnosis of stage three breast cancer of an aggressive type
called HER2+ .
She felt the lump months earlier, and her husband persuaded her to get it checked out. The doctor wasn’t too concerned about it, but after it didn’t go away and started to grow, she went back, had an ultrasound and a biopsy, and was diagnosed soon after.
“Everything started moving quickly from there,” she said.
Her husband and family were extremely supportive and helpful, but Peterson’s son, Lucas, was the biggest motivation to get better. She started chemotherapy around the same time Lucas started kindergarten, and she knew she was going to do everything she could to beat the cancer down.
She went through an onslaught of treatments, including chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, removal of 17 lymph nodes, radiation and an IV drip treatment called Herceptin for her specific type of cancer. And it went well.
“The best news probably came when we were finishing chemotherapy in December of 2008. They did an MRI to see where everything was, and the chemo and the Herceptin were so effective it was astounding. My doctors were all pretty amazed. The tumor, about 7 centimeters in diameter, had gone down to a little pea size. It was incredible,” she said.
As of May 2009, Peterson is cancer-free. And the experience, despite being scary and life-changing, has changed her life for the better, she says. Peterson credits the disease with helping her find dance again.
“Dance is what I really feel fulfilled with the most, so I think after going through cancer treatment and looking forward on my life, I knew I wanted to go back to that as a focus,” she said.
She re-entered the University this fall to finish her dance degree and added a minor in nonprofit administration because she has also started working with a local nonprofit called DanceAbility International, an organization that teaches and performs dance improvisation with people of all backgrounds, regardless of physical or mental disabilities.
“Now, my life is better than it’s ever been. In a lot of ways, my experience through cancer was the reason for that. After coming through cancer, I was less willing or patient to waste time not pursuing what I always felt I needed to do with my life. So, in a way it gave me permission to say ‘Yes’ to doing what I wanted to do,” she said.
Returning to dance was intimidating for Peterson at first. The double mastectomy and other treatments had changed her body a lot, and she was nervous being in a class full of younger, more recently trained dancers.
“It’s been very powerful for me. Once I got over the nervousness about it, it just felt so good to be moving again and doing what I love to do and learning new things … It’s very encouraging for me as I go through this transition of having a very different body than I had before and believing that, yeah, I can still be a professional dancer and share my passion for it with other people,” she said.
Peterson is looking forward to the future. Her son, Lucas, turns 7 in a month, and she teaches dance classes at his elementary school in addition to being a member of the Parent Action Committee. She plans to graduate from the University next spring and continue to work with DanceAbility, choreographing and performing locally and internationally. This Saturday, in fact, Peterson will teach her first workshop for DanceAbility International with Emery Blackwell at the Hilyard Community Center from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“So a lot is happening,” she said. “I don’t know that all of this would have happened if I hadn’t gone through what I just went through. And if it helps to encourage others to be positive and move forward with their passions, then that’s what I want.”
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