Larissa Gionfriddo Podermanski: Always Hope and Never Forgotten

When my daughter Larissa was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), her world could have come to an end.

She was thirty years old. She had just launched a nonprofit, Community Navigators. It was located in Connecticut, and its purpose was to provide services and support to individuals with disabilities who were defining – and working to achieve – their own futures.

She had recently bought a house and gotten engaged. She and Martin were planning a wedding. She was thinking about starting a family soon.

And then in the blink of an eye everything changed. The lump she found in her breast proved to be cancerous.  Before she could even begin treatment, the cancer had spread to her liver and her bones.

Given the dire prognosis, I imagine that most people would crawl into a hole, disappear from view, and take what comfort they could from their remaining days.

That was not Larissa’s style.

She decided to get married immediately, and six days later she and Martin were married in a beautiful, if hastily planned, ceremony. She invested time in her nonprofit, working to build it and grow its reputation. She gardened. She traveled. She built memories. And she hoped.

More importantly, Larissa decided to share her story, and became a tireless advocate for women and men living with MBC. She started a blog she called Metastatically Speaking, through which she reported on her MBC journey. She connected with the Pink Agenda and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, tirelessly raising money and awareness for both organizations and for metastatic breast cancer research.

She created a bucket list, which included both travel and getting to meet her singing idol, Mariah Carey. She made it to Florida several times, and to Poland and Barbados, and she not only met Mariah, she grew to call her a friend.

Larissa understood that her condition was serious when she set living to forty as her goal and accepted that her dogs Bella, Dom, and Mandy would have to substitute for a human family.  What she never accepted was that she couldn’t have hope for a brighter future.

Her cancer steadily progressed, and I grew to dread each three month update. Although she got the best of care, it wasn’t always great care. One health care provider lost her tumor records. She had to switch insurers twice in two years – the first because her insurer wouldn’t cover the specialty treatment she needed in network, and the second because after Congress and the President did their work to undermine the Affordable Care Act in 2017, her premium skyrocketed. That’s just a fact.

Last October, Larissa was featured on Megyn Kelly Today, telling her story with grace, humor, and assertiveness. She said that she knew she would die from her cancer, and that she was okay with that. 

What she wasn’t okay with was a system that offered so little to people with serious chronic conditions in general. And after she met Lady Gaga late last year, she said “Dad, you have to work with her foundation – she’s really concerned about mental health, like you.”

Larissa had a knack for connecting dots like this. She figured out what wasn’t working for her and for people with other serious chronic conditions, and tried to fix it. She learned how to fight for the care she and others needed but often didn’t get because of inadequate public and private insurance. She wondered why we made it so hard.

During her two years of living and thriving with metastatic breast cancer, Larissa found a public voice that I’m not sure even she realized she had until then. She used that voice to advocate, educate, and inform, and to help countless other people with all chronic conditions.

I would tell people I knew that if they ever felt they were losing hope, or struggling to find their own purpose in life, they should watch Larissa’s ten minute Megyn Kelly Today segment. It would help them find purpose. It would restore their hope.

Larissa died on May 10, after bringing hope and joy to my world for thirty-two years. Megyn Kelly did a live tribute. Mariah Carey tweeted her sorrow. Larissa left us with a message that no matter how bleak things seem, there is always hope, while hoping only that she would never be forgotten.

  

Paul Gionfriddo is President and CEO of Mental Health America. His twitter handle is @pgionfriddo, and his email is gionfriddopaul@gmail.com.