She is Dulce Robles, a resilient woman, mother of six, who faced death head-on in 2016 after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I spent a year in treatment, there were 12 chemotherapy sessions and 36 radiation treatments,” Dulce recalls.
Determined to fight and supported by one of her daughters, she faced the illness, but another reason would soon take away her will to live.
Dulce, with a broken heart, asked the doctors to stop the treatment.
“Before stepping out of that door, the doctor told me: ‘In less than three months you could die.’ It was then that I heard my daughter’s voice saying: ‘Mom, I need you’.”
A year later, celebrating that she was cancer-free, life delivered another test: a visit to the doctor of one of her daughters would bring the nightmare back to her mind…
“A year later I finished all my treatment and she began hers. On November 17, she was diagnosed with cancer,” she added.
Dulce, never losing hope, carried on through this battle, but—she says—her daughter Janie kept from her that the doctor had given only a year to live.
“She told me she had a toothache, had it pulled, the bleeding started and that isn’t true, she was already overwhelmed by cancer… in a year, she died on November 13,” she recounted about the painful experience.
Six years have passed since that painful departure. And as every 12 months, Dulce invites her community to honor Janie’s memory. A Zumba class is the way she, along with another group of women and men, pays tribute. And she uses it to send them a message.
“To everyone who never left me alone, thank you.”
