FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Fort Lauderdale Police spokesperson Casey Liening is opening up about her ongoing battle with breast cancer, as she continues her efforts to help others with the disease.
Before she received her diagnosis, Liening was soaring. She had met the love of her life, FLPD Officer Mike Salvati, and the two got married.
But speaking with 7News on Thursday, Liening said something was off.
“I just knew I didn’t feel good. I just knew something was wrong,” she said.
Liening, whose mother is a breast cancer survivor, was proactive.
“I knew that that preventative mammogram, those preventative screenings were the key to saving someone’s life, because it saved my mom’s life,” she said. “I talked to my doctor when I turned 30. That was March of 2021, and my doctor told me no.”
Six months later, Liening found a lump while taking a shower.
“So the radiologist misdiagnosed me several times, because I had three mammograms and three ultrasounds over the course of a year and a half, and they never found anything,” she said, “but the tumor, we’ve come to find out, was 7.8 centimeters.”
That’s about three inches. Liening said she demanded more testing, MRIs and biopsies.
A surgeon back in April told Liening that everyone had gotten it wrong.
“It is consider stage 4A metastatic breast cancer, meaning it’s spread outside the breast and outside the lymph nodes. Now it’s in my bones,” she said, “so I have tumors on my spine, on my rib, on my sternum and on my hip. I will always be on treatments, so form of treatment, for the rest of my life, and we don’t know what the rest of my life looks like.”
“Watching her treatment, watching what she goes through every month — the biopsies, just seeing what she’s able to endure — it’s crazy,” said Salvati. “She does it with such grace, and I’m very lucky.”
“I want everyone watching — men, women, everyone — to know that, first and foremost, you have to advocate for yourself, you have to trust your gut instinct,” saod Liening. “When you think something is wrong, or you know something is wrong, something’s not normal, then you should bring it to your doctor’s attention, and if your doctor doesn’t take you seriously, then you should probably find a different doctor.”
These treatments are now the norm for Liening, but she hopes they will give her many more years with her husband. It’s a future that, she said, is worth fighting for,.
“Instead of letting this diagnosis get me down, and instead of saying, ‘I’m dying from cancer,’ I’m living with cancer,” she said. “I’m going to be motivated by this diagnosis. I’m not going to be let down by it.”
WSVN is a proud sponsor of the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walks coming later this month. In Broward County, it has been moved this year from Huizenga Plaza to the Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise. It will take place on Saturday, Oct. 21.
The following weekend, on Saturday, Oct. 28, a walk is scheduled to take place at loanDepot Park in Miami.
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