FIGHTING CHANCE

AS THE WORLD TURNS Alum Marnie Schulenburg Opens Up About Her Battle With Stage 4 Breast Cancer

- DEVIN OWENS

With the arrival of her daughter, Coda, last December, Marnie Schulenburg felt 2019 was ending on a high note. “She was a week early and she came pretty fast,” the actress recalls of the special delivery, which also involved husband Zack Robidas. “I wanted to labor a lot at home, so I was using this app to keep track of my contractions and I lost track! By the time we got to the hospital, I was already seven centimeters dilated at 9 p.m. and she came at 12:36 a.m. It was only four hours of active labor, and really just an hour of pushing. I didn’t have time to get any drugs. The last nine months of helping her grow and feeling her move inside of me to actually getting to hold her was most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.”

With acting jobs coming down the pike for the new parents and plans to buy their first home, it seemed that 2020 was on track for a banner year, but trouble loomed on the horizon. “I started noticing pain in my left breast,” Schulenburg shares. “It wasn’t until Coda was about 2 months old that I realized I couldn’t fully lay down on one side. I was trying a lot of home remedies, but by the end of February, I called my ob-gyn and I said, ‘I’m really concerned. This hasn’t been clearing up.’ ”