Angela Silverio - "It's Marvelous to Be Here"

Angela Silverio, Raleigh, NC

In 2006, Angela Silverio was getting ready to move to the United States from the Dominican Republic to be with her husband who had already moved to the US. Before moving, she decided to have a medical checkup in Santo Domingo. During this checkup, the doctor saw something suspicious in Silverio’s mammogram. After an ultrasound and a biopsy, the doctor confirmed it was breast cancer.

“I never thought it could be breast cancer,” Silverio explained. Her only symptoms were a change in her hair and continued exhaustion.

After her diagnosis, Silverio decided to move to the US sooner than originally planned. “I didn’t know anything about where to go for treatment, but I knew that I needed to start treatments soon.”

Silverio says that before she left her apartment, she and her husband prayed. “We asked God to guide us to where we needed to be, and like out of magic, we arrived at UNC.”

She arrived in the US in August of 2006 and within less than a month underwent surgery, in September. She had a subsequent surgery in October. “I am so lucky. They treated me so well from the start. They repeated all of the tests to confirm my diagnosis,” says Silverio.

Silverio will soon undergo breast reconstruction with perforator flap surgery. "This is a relatively new type of breast reconstruction surgery that has been popularized in the last five to ten years," explains Silverio's doctor, Eric Halvorson, MD. "UNC is one of only two centers in the state to offer this type of surgery." During the procedure the skin and soft tissue removed during a mastectomy is replaced with living tissue and skin borrowed from the abdomen without sacrificing muscle.

“The care at UNC is excellent. I’m so grateful to all the staff for my treatment. It’s marvelous to be here," says Silverio. She advises other patients to "find a place that makes you feel the way I have felt here, where the doctors and nurses are encouraging.”

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