After battling breast cancer three times, you might think Marlene Wexler wouldn’t have any fight left to give. But you’d be wrong. This 72-year-old Brooklyn Park weight lifter is anything but down on her own luck. “I always say, ‘You can give up, you can give in, or you can give it all you’ve got,’” she says. And Erin, at age 33, was considered too young for concern and she had zero history of breast or ovarian cancer in the family. She also breastfed her two kids, didn’t drink in excess, and didn’t take a hormone replacement. But following the exam, her radiologist scheduled a biopsy that confirmed what Erin was bracing herself to hear: The C word. She had Stage 2 breast cancer, which called for chemo, radiation, surgery, and reconstruction. “I was in shock. I was devastated. The wind was knocked out of me,” she says. “I immediately thought it was a death sentence.”

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