The fight that changed Eileen Nu\u00f1ez’s life is now fueling her to the finish line of the New York City Marathon on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m already feeling like I did the hardest thing that I will ever have to do in my life,” Nu\u00f1ez said. “And what\u2019s 26 miles when I beat cancer?”<\/p>\n
In March 2025, at just 34 years old, she was diagnosed with stage two triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the disease. Her diagnosis came 10 months after she lost her best friend, Liz Brown, to the same cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy only experience with breast cancer was unfortunately one that was fatal,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said. \u201cAnd so I really had to get out of that place where I felt that this was the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her treatment plan included chemo, immunotherapy and a double mastectomy. During the first three weeks of treatment, Nu\u00f1ez got engaged to her boyfriend, PJ, and they married four weeks later.<\/p>\n
In October 2025, Nu\u00f1ez got the news she and her family had been praying for: She was in remission.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard the words, \u2018You\u2019re in remission,\u2019\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said. \u201cI was like, OK, I want to live life. And I didn\u2019t really know what living my life looked like in that moment. But I wanted to do challenging things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, Nu\u00f1ez committed to training for the New York City Marathon while she was still completing the final stages of her treatment plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to continue to live my life, and I also wanted to reclaim and reconnect with my body as well,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t even able to run half a mile while I was going through chemo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nu\u00f1ez is running with The Pink Agenda, a breast cancer organization that funds cancer research and raises awareness of the disease. PJ, who supported her throughout her cancer treatment, will run alongside her for all 26.2 miles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I could have done it without him,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said. \u201cWe just support each other in ways that we never imagined that we would have to support each other. And that just brings us closer together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Julie McGuinness, Nu\u00f1ez\u2019s oncologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, is also running the marathon. She said she’s inspired by her patient\u2019s resilience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really quite amazing, because I often tell patients that their cancer treatment is a marathon, not a sprint,\u201d McGuinness said. \u201cBut most people are not going to take that and literally run a marathon afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI beat cancer,\u201d Nu\u00f1ez said. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt in my mind that I can do this, and that\u2019s what\u2019s going to carry me through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fight that changed Eileen Nu\u00f1ez’s life is now fueling her to the finish line of the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14333,11101,25,9,24,12,56,63,65,64,319,27,200],"class_list":["post-387869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-alyssa-paolicelli","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}