A mother battling breast cancer has said she was banned from going to her daughter’s school due to her smell.
Kerri Mascareno has stage 4 breast cancer and is currently taking chemotherapy pills in order to shrink the tumor before having surgery, according to New Mexico local news outlet KOBR-TV.
Stromg body odour is a common symptom of breast cancer and Mascareno says the principal at Tierra Antigua elementary school, has a issue with this.
According to Mascareno, Principal Robert Abney told her she could no longer enter the school because of her smell.
She claims he also told her that she could participate in a school-wide Thanksgiving lunch only if she and her daughter sat in his office, instead of with the group.
“He just said he knows this is going to hurt my feelings and he understands where I’m coming from because his mother had breast cancer and she had the same exact smell and I can no longer be in the school and that with me being in the school that I made his employees ill,” Kerri said, according to the news outlet.
The executive director of communications for Albuquerque Public Schools Monica Armenta, told The Huffington Post that while she could not speak to the details of the case, “never at any time was Ms. Mascareno banned from the school, at no time was she ever told she wouldn’t be welcome to join her daughter for [Thanksgiving] lunch.”
The director did admit that the principal initially wrote to the mother suggesting that if she’d like, “[the school] could make accommodations for her to have [Thanksgiving] lunch with her daughter in a location other than the cafeteria.”
After Mascareno did not get back to Abney regarding the suggestion, the principal reportedly wrote back and said she was “absolutely welcome” to sit in the cafeteria.
