Local Residents Testify In Support Of ‘Marnie’s Law’ At Statehouse

At 4:30 a.m. July 14, two local residents started the long drive to Boston, carrying the memory of their friend Marnie Robidas to the Statehouse. To those who knew her, Marnie was a performer, a friend and a mother. To the lawmakers who heard testimony in July, she was also the reason for a bill that could save lives.

Cape Cod locals Joshua Koopman and John Schulenburg testified at the Massachusetts Statehouse in support of “Marnie’s Law,” an act designed to add inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) education to the curriculum of all undergraduate nursing programs in the Commonwealth and related health care organizations. Named for Marnie Elizabeth Cass Robidas, who passed away in 2022 after a misdiagnosis delayed her treatment, the bill aims to prevent other women from facing the same fate. 

 Inflammatory breast cancer is rare, aggressive and often mistaken for less serious conditions. According to Dr. Wendy Woodward of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 30 percent of IBC cases are already metastatic and incurable at diagnosis because primary care providers are unfamiliar with the signs. 

The cost of delayed diagnosis puts a strain on both families and the healthcare system. According to Schulenburg, Marnie’s father, her 24 months of treatment for Stage IV IBC cost $2,089,509. If her cancer had been caught sooner, even at Stage III, the cost would have been closer to $130,000, according to estimates from the Journal of American Health and Drug Benefits, 

For Marnie, that delay was devastating. She was initially treated for mastitis and prescribed numerous rounds of antibiotics. Only after a skin punch biopsy did doctors discover she had Stage IV inflammatory breast cancer. In the time between the misdiagnosis and correct diagnosis, her disease advanced from a treatable Stage III to an incurable Stage IV. She died on May 17, 2022 at the age of 37. 

But Marnie was more than her illness. Born at Cape Cod Hospital — the 14th generation of her family born on the Cape — she attended Barnstable High School, ran cross country and worked at a local restaurant. A performer at heart, she appeared on the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns,” where she earned a Daytime Emmy Award nomination and later launched a podcast titled “The Bloody Business of Being a Woman.”

In May 2020, after Marnie shared her diagnosis on Facebook, her friends and family formed “Marnie’s Army,” a network that began as a show of support and grew into a movement. 

Today their fight continues with the Mother and Child Initiative, also known as "Marnie's Law,” which is spearheaded by Marnie’s longtime friend Joshua Koopman, owner of Pizza Shark, and her father. In addition to over 600 letters of individual support, the law is supported by two of the world’s leading cancer treatment centers — MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. According to Woodward, including IBC education as a mandatory component will facilitate earlier diagnosis that will save lives. 

They are supported in this by Representatives Kip Diggs, D-Barnstable, and Hadley Luddy, D-Orleans, who co-sponsored the bill. Luddy said while she understands these cases are difficult to predict, anything she can do to add preventive measures for correct and timely diagnosis is important. For her, laws backed by a caring community are part of her core mission.

 “It really does take a village to move mountains like legislation, and it gives me a lot of hope in our community to see all that people do to advocate for solutions like these,” she said.

 The bill must clear the public health committee by Sept. 12 to move forward. 

 For those carrying Marnie’s legacy, the effort is about saving lives. According to Koopman, the bill honors Marnie’s legacy and paves the way for additional legislation to ensure that women with IBC get diagnosed early and accurately.

 “It has been the honor of my life to support [Marnie’s father] in this fight,” Koopman said. “We could really do something amazing here if it passes.”