- An out-of-control skier knocked Liz Healy down and broke her tailbone in 2022 — prompting scans that uncovered a tumor on her kidney
- After she followed up with doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Healy discovered she had two types of cancer — and needed immediate treatment and surgery
- She’s raising funds via Cycle for Survival for MSKCC, telling PEOPLE treatment is “a constant battle, but the reality is I’m alive”
Liz Healy felt fine — until an out-of-control skier collided with her on a trip to Vermont three years ago.
“I smashed my body on ice and smashed my tailbone,” Healy, 48, tells PEOPLE exclusively of the Feb. 13, 2022, accident.
But as she says, “Knocking me on my butt saved my life.”
The management consultant and mom of three from Stamford, Conn, says when a doctor ran scans on her back, she was told, “Your tailbone is broken — and by the way, you know, you have a tumor on your kidney that needs to be looked at right away.”
Her immediate reaction, she says, was disbelief. “I cried. I had my emotional pity party — and then picked myself up and got into, ‘OK, who’s the best kidney surgeon in the country?’ “
She got three medical opinions before seeking care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, where she met Dr. Paul Russo. “He took one look at the images and said, ‘Something else is going on here.’ “
Healy tells PEOPLE that the scans also showed lesions on her liver — lesions that had previously been dismissed, as she’d been told “ignore the liver lesions, because everybody has them. They’re like, ‘Did you take Advil? Were you on birth control? That’s probably your liver lesion sources.’ “
Russo referred her to a colleague, and MSKCC put her through “every test imaginable.”
Then, on March 18 at 7 p.m., Healy got a phone call from her kidney surgeon. “I knew picking up that phone — no doctors call you at 7 o’clock on a Friday night unless it’s really bad news.”
The verdict was two rare cancers: one in her kidney and stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver and multiple lymph nodes.
Healy, who shares three daughters — Ella, now 14, Emily, 34, and Caitlin, 36, with husband James Reichbach — says her family booked an impromptu getaway to Puerto Rico before treatment started, but on the morning of their departure, “I could not keep any food down.”
She went to MSKCC’s emergency room and learned she had a complete blockage of her colon. Three days later, they had “pulled together a team to do a colon resection, a liver resection,” and a placement of a hockey-puck-like device — a hepatic arterial infusion (HAI) pump — that delivers chemotherapy directly to the liver.
“I tried to pump the brakes. I asked the surgeon ‘Hey, can we wait two weeks?’ Because I thought I could die in the surgery. I want two more weeks to tell my little girl everything — give her list of things I want her to know about life,’” she said of Ella, then 11. “I figured if I got two more weeks I might be able to do that.”
But her surgeon said, “You have 13% chance of living 5 years. Given you have two different cancers, that percentage is probably lower. If you wait two weeks, you will probably go septic and die. And why would you wait? You need to get this stuff out of your body.’ And I shut up and, and I was on my knees [praying] until that surgery went down.”
The 10-hour surgery took place two months after the skiing collision — and it was a success. Following chemotherapy treatment, Healy was declared NED (no evidence of disease). But then a blood test came back positive — the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. More chemotherapy followed. And then the cancer spread to her lungs.
“Based on the research I had done and discussions with my doctor,” Healy said, “I was gonna be basically on chemo for life. I came to terms with that — it’s just gonna continue to be a whack-a-mole situation until the cancer outsmarts my body and the medicines.”
But she’s not done fighting — not just for herself, but to support the work and research done at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It’s why she’s teamed up with Cycle for Survival, a rare-cancer fundraising initiative for MSKCC that’s raised $400 million since its launch in 2007. All proceeds from the indoor stationary cycling event go to support rare cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
“My key to mental health has always been movement,” she says. “Movement is my medicine —and I have found in this cancer journey [that] movement for a cause is the best medicine for me.”
She explains why this particular cause is so important.
“It gives me a goal. It gives me an opportunity to raise awareness about colon cancer,” Healy says. “It’s gonna be the number one killer of men and women by 2030, it’s and currently the number one killer of men under the age of 50.”
“It’s an opportunity to show my gratitude to the doctors, nurses, staff, and aides that saved and are saving my life,” she said. “It’s just like a constant battle, but the reality is I’m alive.”
As Healy adds, her oldest daughter has welcomed a daughter‚ and her middle daughter is expecting twins next month. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she says. “This is the absolute best promotion I’ve ever received in my life to be a grandma, and it gives me even more reason to reason to fight.”
“I’ve got a lot to live for and doing Cycle for Survival, being in service to others [is] critical to my journey,” she says. “Movement is medicine, it’s for a cause — and it’s helped keep me alive.”
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