‘Home Edit” Guru Clea Shearer, 43, Undergoes Life Edit: Her Eight Breast Cancer Surgery & Finding True Purpose

Despite the Netflix star of “Get Organized with The Home Edit” having undergoing various surgeries in her cancer journey, and breast reconstruction surgery just last year, she most recently needed another procedure done after her doctor found a wound near her incision cite, which was open to her one of her breasts implants.

Speaking to People about what led to her most recent surgery, which she understands may not be her last, the mom of two recounted her routine oncology appointment, saying, ““[My doctor] noticed that my skin was kind of tearing, breaking at the incision site and he was like, ‘Have you noticed this?’ And I said, ‘To be honest, no.’

“He sent a picture to my surgeon. My surgeon said to come right in. The second he looked at it, he was like, ‘What are you doing on Monday? We’ve got to get you in immediately.'”

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Shearer explained further to People, “This was my eighth surgery in just a couple short years. So sadly, I am very good at this, but still this one threw me for a loop. They opened it up and they cleaned the implant, cleaned the cavity, and sewed me back up. It went really well.

“I’m trying to not get my hopes up that this worked and it’s done and everything’s great. “My doctor told me to emotionally prepare for needing another [surgery]. So I’m kind of going at this with optimism, but with one foot in.”

She added, “I’m not going to celebrate that this was my last surgery like I did last time,” she adds. “That was kind of a fool’s errand. I’m cautiously optimistic, but this time I’m steeling myself.”

The surgery took place on Jan. 27, and Shearer is now awaiting her results, to learn whether or not she will need another surgery.

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Now she insists she is focusing on getting to the “finish line,” adding, “All of these surgeries, plus chemo and radiation, have definitely exhausted me, I will say. But otherwise, I feel like physically I’m doing well. I think mentally I’m doing pretty well too.

“When I got diagnosed, I told myself, I am going to make my cancer purposeful. I am not going to let it take me down, and I’m going to let it be something that turns into a gift that I can give other people. That was my goal then, and it’s my goal now.”

Clea Shearer’s Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Clea Shearer’s cancer journey began on March 8, 2022 after discovering a lump.

“I found a lump myself the last week of February,” Shearer posted to Instagram at the time. “I had been trying to make an appt with my OB(GYN) for several months, and even when I told them I found a lump, they couldn’t accommodate me.”

“I had to request a mammogram from my general doctor, which led to an ultrasound and then an emergency triple biopsy,” she added.

Shearer would later be diagnosed with breast cancer. She was initially told her cancer was stage 1, but during a nine-hour surgery in April 2022, doctors found cancer in one of her lymph nodes, which elevated the cancer to stage 2.

She was diagnosed with an “aggressive and fast-moving” breast cancer, but she thankfully caught it early. Clea had two tumors, one measuring 2 centimeters in size and the other 3 centimeters.

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According to People, the type of cancer Shearer was diagnosed with was stage 2 invasive mammary carcinoma, a type of early-stage breast cancer that has developed in the breast or spread to neighboring lymph nodes.

Stage 2 breast cancers are either larger than stage 1 tumors or have moved to a few nearby lymph nodes. Treatment will likely be some combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. If chemotherapy is also needed after surgery, the radiation is delayed until the chemo is done. The same approach is taken to hormone receptor and HER2 positive as stage 1.

Early-stage breast cancer means that there’s a small tumor in the breast and that there are no lymph nodes affected.

“For stage one breast cancer, the first step is to remove the cancer. If a woman needs a lumpectomy, most often, she will have radiation after that. In some instances, depending on her age, she may not need radiation,” she explained further.

“Depending on the size and other features such as family history, a patient may opt for more aggressive surgery. So even for an early stage 1 breast cancer, a woman may elect a mastectomy to remove her whole breast. Then, once that surgery happens, a pathologist is able to look at that tissue underneath the microscope and decide what treatment a woman needs after the surgery has removed it.”

Shearer underwent treatment, which included a double mastectomy.

Her treatment also included both chemotherapy and radiation. During chemotherapy, patients receive cancer-killing drugs either orally or intravenously. Radiation therapy is also aimed at killing cancer cells, except it’s administered using high-energy X-ray beams aimed at cancer cells.

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Shearer’s first round of chemotherapy occurred in May 2022. However, a common side effect of chemotherapy is hair loss, and the reality TV star also experienced it during this emotional phase of the journey.

“Very short hair, and really don’t care,” she wrote in an Instagram post about a week after cutting all her hair off. “This first round of chemo has been a lot, both physically and mentally. It wiped me out for a few days, but it makes the good days feel that much better.”

In November 2022, Shearer revealed she was “cancer free”; however, she still copes with survivorship.

Learning About Breast Cancer Treatment

Your doctor has many ways to treat breast cancer, including:

• Surgery
• Chemotherapy
• Radiation
• Hormone therapy
• Targeted therapy
• Immunotherapy

‘It’s important to understand why your doctor is recommending a particular type of treatment,’ says Dr. Jessica Tao

Surgery

Most women with breast cancer will have surgery at some point in their treatment. Depending on how far your cancer has spread and your personal preferences, you and your doctor may decide to:

• Remove just the cancer and an area of healthy tissue around it (lumpectomy)
• Remove one breast (mastectomy)
• Remove both breasts (double mastectomy)

Removing your breasts can have a dramatic effect on your self-esteem, which is why some women who opt for a mastectomy then choose breast reconstruction surgery. This is a highly personal choice, and there is no “right” answer as to whether or not to reconstruct.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy uses strong drugs to kill cancer all over the body. You may get this treatment to shrink a tumor before surgery, afterward to get rid of any remaining cancer cells, or on its own if you can’t have surgery.

Whether or not to have chemotherapy can also be a choice, depending on a woman’s age, type of cancer, and stage.

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy is the use of high-energy rays to destroy cancer cells and is typically used after surgery to lower the chance that the cancer will come back after treatment. Many women undergo radiation as part of their treatment, especially if they opt for a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy.

Hormone Therapy

The hormones estrogen and progesterone help some breast cancers grow. Doctors refer to these types of cancers as hormone-receptor-positive breast cancers. Receptors are proteins on the surface of breast cells that receive messages from estrogen, progesterone, or both, telling them to grow. Treatments that block these hormones may help stop the tumor.

Testing the tumor sample from a biopsy helps to determine whether hormone therapies such as tamoxifen (Nolvadex) or anastrozole (Arimidex) might work against the cancer. Women with breast cancer that is fueled by estrogen may take one of these drugs as part of their treatment.

Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapy

Immunotherapy and targeted therapies are newer forms of treatment. Immunotherapy boosts your body’s own immune response to help it stop the cancer.

As their name suggests, targeted therapies target certain substances that help the cancer grow. For example, drugs like trastuzumab (Herceptin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) treat breast cancers that have too much of a protein called HER2 on their surface.

Staying Positive Despite Adversity

We love how Clea Shearer remained positive and hopeful throughout her breast cancer journey, which is why we’d like to point out how SurvivorNet specializes in covering the lives of people who overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Often, seeing the positive helps them maintain their resilience.

WATCH: Defining and Building Resilience

Dr. Zuri Murrell, an oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously spoke to SurvivorNet about the role of a positive outlook on survival rates, saying, “I’m pretty good at telling what kind of patient are going to still have this attitude and probably going to live the longest, even with bad, bad disease. And those are patients who, they have gratitude in life.”

Resilience is an important trait, but not the easiest to build. The ultimate goal is not to avoid tough times, but to be able to bounce back from them. And yet, when they are faced with an overwhelming, life-changing situation, how do people shift their view? How do they learn to see the problem as temporary, rather than permanent, and figure out a solution?

It’s complicated, because building resilience is more about your mental and emotional fortitude than anything else. According to the American Psychological Association, “the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.” In other words, resilience is not something you’re born with, which should be encouraging. Instead, after every challenge in your life, you build more and more resilience to those hard times.

You can build resilience the way you build muscle – through patience and steady exercise of the skill. Here are some lessons taken from Fischer, Runkel, and Soller, all who have spoke with SurvivorNet in earlier interviews.

• Be willing to learn. If one way doesn’t work, find a different way. If an obstacle lands in your way, build a path around it or over it. In Resilience, one of the athletes says, “You always have to be learning. Otherwise, life gets stagnant.” The more you learn, the more you grow and growth is a sign of resilience.
• Spend time with people who inspire you. Our world is filled with people who overcome challenges, and their success can energize you to overcome your own. Think about famous people who hava faced adversity and did not give up Stephen King actually threw his manuscript, Carrie, in the trash because it had been rejected by publishers so many times. His wife encouraged him to keep sending it out, and he finally sold it in 1974 launching a massively successful career as a novelist. Take the time to read and learn about the lives of Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, Bethany Hamilton, Nelson Mandela, and others.
• Allow yourself to grieve. Don’t push away or dismiss your frustration and sadness. Ben Fischer says that life can be filled with lots of crying, but “Those cries make us stronger.”
• Be flexible. Abandon the idea that there is only one solution or that you must stick to your original plan. The best solution or plan is the one that eventually works. You may need to change your original plan as the circumstances change.
• Lean in to your community. Your friends, colleagues, and family are invaluable, and when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed by a problem, their support can carry you. The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest study of human well-being. Many news outlets have covered its results, which show that maintaining strong, healthy relationships helped people live longer lives.   Psychiatrist and author Dr. Samantha Boardman tells SurvivorNet that connecting with and contributing to the lives of other people are two of “the three wellsprings of vitality” (the third is feeling positively challenged).

Dr. Dana Chase, a gynecologic oncologist at UCLA Health, says that maintaining good emotional health and quality of life is associated with better survival and patient outcomes. She encourages cancer patients to prioritize their emotional health for this reason.

WATCH: The benefits of finding time for joy amid health struggles.

“So definitely working on your emotional health, your physical well-being, your social environment, your emotional well-being, definitely working on those things and making them better are important and can impact your survival,” Dr. Chase told SurvivorNet.

Dr. Chase suggests tapping into your support network, including loved ones like friends and family. It can also be a patient advocate or a support group — in-person or virtual — that shares your cancer or disease.

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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