From Cancer to Kilimanjaro: How Janella Found Healing and Strength at Cleveland Clinic in Florida

Miami resident Janella Bustamante went home to Lima, Peru for treatment for breast cancer in 2021. But when she returned to Florida to finish up, she was pleasantly surprised to find Cleveland Clinic in Florida felt like home too.

In the winter of 2022, Janella, who is now 40, needed to get back to the United States, where she had lived for almost 20 years, because she wanted to get back to the day-to-day operations of her travel agency. She had been diagnosed with triple positive breast cancer (cancer that is fueled by estrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein) in June of 2021 and had spent the ensuing months undergoing a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatments in Lima. When she finished her radiation treatments, her doctor cleared her to return to Florida and continue biological therapy there.

Though happy to return to her home in the United States, she was concerned about going to a new medical practice, assuming none could be as warm and caring as her doctors in Peru.

“But Cleveland Clinic proved me wrong,” Janella says. “They are amazing doctors who care.”

Janella hiking in the mountains.

On her first appointment with Zeina Nahleh, MD, a Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital oncologist, Janella says she started to cry because she felt so cared for.

“I love that I found someone who is so similar to my doctor in Peru,” she says. “Dr. Nahleh and all of the other doctors and nurses have been incredible. It’s almost like coming to a family reunion. I didn’t expect this.”

Having completed her biological treatments (targeted infusion therapies that attack HER2 cancer cells), Janella sees Dr. Nahleh and her team every three months for follow-ups and actually enjoys it.

“I look forward to seeing them and catching up,” she says. “We talk about what we do outside of the hospital, so it feels like seeing friends.”

Janella snowshoeing in the mountains.

Janella’s road through diagnosis, treatment and life after cancer has not been an easy one. But she chooses to see the positive, saying she feels great and is proud of herself for having cultivated the strength to manage it all. Through the experience she has found a deeper connection to life in nature, and that has fueled a new passion – climbing mountains. Janella has become an avid mountaineer, having already conquered Mount Kilimanjaro, among others. She is training now to climb Mount Everest in 2027.

“I am strong now and I look great. Cancer gave me that. It was an opportunity for rebirth, to fix what I was not doing right. And I’m grateful for that,” she says.