“Thirty years, I’m using that vein,” laughs owner Andrea Della Mura as a registered nurse hooks her up to an IV bag full of vitamins in Rye’s The DRIPBaR. Today, she’s getting the soother IV — a balancing act of magnesium with vitamins B, B12, and B complex. Looking up at the bag of supplements and then back down to her trusty vein, every time Della Mura is hooked up to a vitamin drip, she can’t help but let the waves of the past wash over her. That very same vein has been her reliable sidekick, seeing her through dozens of bouts of chemotherapy, two breast cancer diagnoses, and a calling to heal her community from the inside out.
At first, when 24-year-old Della Mura found the tumor herself, she was dismissed and told, “People your age don’t get cancer.” Tell that to the 12 rounds of chemotherapy and 36 treatments of radiation. “They take you down to death and then they bring you back to life,” she says. The second time she heard “the C word,” she was 39 years old and going for a mammogram, with her 4-year-old son on her hip, begging the radiologist with her eyes not to say it out loud. The decision thereafter was easy: a double mastectomy in her future to end this cycle hopefully once and for all. She is still with the same White Plains Hospital oncologist who held her hand through both cancer carousels.
A founding member of Support Connection, a countywide nonprofit that provides emotional, social, and educational support for those affected by breast, ovarian, and gynecological cancer, Della Mura is no stranger to creating a community. But with that, she is hyperconscious of her work, and what that means for the people she’s doing that work for. “When you think you’re healed, you’re just not,” says Della Mura. “Having survived cancer twice, today [at] 55 years old, it’s not lost on me that there are people who have a different journey. Survivor’s guilt is real.”
Founding The DRIPBaR has also been about improving the health of her community. Della Mura collaborates with local businesses, works with the school system, and advocates for women’s health. And with the lights on for fewer than 90 days, Della Mura has built a member base of more than 100-strong. She knows everyone by name and vitamin preference, is quick with a joke and a snack, and will drop what she’s doing to either answer a question or find someone who can. “Vitamin therapy is so crucial for so many people, no matter what you’re dealing with,” she says.
Cancer does not come with a manual. The duality of fighting off disease and advocating for your treatment is enough to topple even the strongest person.
Cancer does not come with a manual. The duality of fighting off disease and advocating for your treatment is enough to topple even the strongest person. But Andrea Della Mura isn’t just a strong person — she is a warrior, who noticed weaknesses in her treatment and decided that no one was going to suffer similarly. “I cashed out my retirement to do this. We’re sitting in my retirement fund,” says Della Mura. “And I wouldn’t change a thing, because this is my purpose.”
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