What the Heart Endures: Salma’s Journey Through Rare Cancer and Back to Herself

Salma while she received chemotherapy treatment.

Salma Harfouche (known affectionately as Sal) never knew a time during her childhood and teenage years where she wasn’t afflicted with constant fatigue, exercise intolerance, and episodes where she would struggle to breathe or have vision changes. 

Throughout the years, her doctors checked her for everything they could have expected would be wrong, ranging from thyroid conditions to diabetes – none of those were the problem. After some time, she started to wonder if this was just simply her ‘normal.’ Despite her ongoing concerns, she was never offered a CT scan.

In 2018, at the age of 20, after meeting with over 20 doctors and specialists in total over a three-year period of especially difficult symptoms and countless Emergency Room visits, she was finally diagnosed with a tumor on her heart after begging for a closer look at Hudson Regional Center New Jersey.

“It had been 20 years of not having answers and being told I was a hypochondriac," she said.

Her doctors told her that the tumor was likely growing in her chest her entire life. They initially tried to drain the fluid around the tumor thinking that it may be a cyst instead, but when it quickly refilled, concern mounted.

Due to the toxicity of chemotherapy on the heart, her care team recommended surgery first. She was operated on by specialized heart surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. 

When the tumor was removed that same year, it was 17 by 10 centimeters and had displaced her heart’s position in her chest. That’s a little bit larger than your average smartphone. Surgeons were able to identify it as a leiomyosarcoma (LMS) of the heart that had fortunately not metastasized. This is an incredibly rare malignant tumor that accounts for less than one-fifth of all cardiac sarcomas. 

Immediately, she recalls feeling the weight literally come off her chest. 

After surgery, Sal completed chemotherapy and radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center through the end of 2019, at which point she was declared cancer-free. However, the impact of having been diagnosed with and battling a rare cancer remained. 

Salma and her mother before her chemotherapy began. She dyed her hair yellow for Sarcoma Awareness Month.

“The biggest challenge I had was the change in my new normal. I lost so many friends and made so many new friends…the sense of loss of who I was and not being able to accept the new person I was becoming,” she said. 

Throughout this entire experience, Salma continued to go to college, although her aspirations shifted over time from wanting to pursue medicine to fully embracing her love for the arts. She even battled a period of drug addiction from 2020 through 2022 as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that she had developed from the entire experience, and she emphasizes that she wants to highlight this struggle instead of shying away from it, knowing that others have been through the same experience as well.

Slowly, however, Sal found her footing again and got the help she needed coping with the weight of the diagnosis and journey she had endured. 

After nearly seven years of undergraduate education, she recently completed her degrees in Biochemistry and Applied Mathematics. 

Today, Sal is an opera and jazz singer, co-founder of an ongoing event guide for all things happening in New Jersey, and even a volunteer therapeutic clown that spreads joy at hospitals, veterans homes and fire departments. She’s keeping quite busy, despite needing a follow-up procedure just a few months ago to fix her paralyzed diaphragm, a result of her earlier heart surgery. 

Despite the hardships, Salma truly believes that everything happens for a reason and that her heart leiomyosarcoma experience helped her to fully appreciate life more

“There really is a reason for what we are going through, whether we see it now or we never see it or we see it 10 years down the road,” she said. “There’s love, there’s loss in life, nothing lasts forever, that’s just the way it is.”

Sal also took her experience with rare cancer to the internet in hopes of finding community, and she was certainly successful in her goal.

“Without social media, I wouldn’t be able to find so many other people who went through a similar experience even if it wasn’t heart cancer,” she said.

Sal was even able to talk with two women who had similar symptoms in the United Kingdom and provide them with support. They both went on to be diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcomas. 

“Once awareness starts, there's more research,” Sal said when reflecting on lessons learned and what she wishes care providers understood more deeply.

“It [rare cancer] can happen at any age… young people get sick too. And there’s still a lack of awareness - more awareness would go a long way.”

Salma getting glammed up as she continued to go to school during treatment, a testament of strength and resilience.