In the fifth season of the NBC series Chicago Med, actress Marlyne Barrett’s character of Maggie Lockwood, the charge nurse for the fictional emergency department at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center, battled breast cancer. In real life, the 44-year-old actress has found herself facing the disease. In July, doctors found a football-sized tumor on her uterus and left ovary.

“I’m an extremely private person, but I felt a responsibility to tell my story,” said Barrett to PEOPLE. “When my character went through breast cancer, I had a sea of people reach out to me through social media. They brought me courage, and so I felt a sense of inevitability to meet their hearts where they met me.”

Barrett, who also played Nerese Campbell on The Wire, had a hernia repair in April, and afterward, found that she had been feeling off. “I had this accumulation of fluid [in my abdomen] that I couldn’t shake,” she said. “I looked like I was nine months pregnant. And I also had shortness of breath, but no pain, which was interesting.”

On July 18, she found out that the “off’” feeling was caused by cancer on her ovary and uterus. “The initial experience was a shock, a shock to my womanhood,” she said, adding that to her knowledge, she doesn’t have a family history of uterine or ovarian cancers. “I didn’t believe them, but when they showed me the CT scan, I went, ‘Oh my word,” she added. “The first questions were, ‘Am I going to live?’ I just fell into my husband’s arms. It still takes my breath away when I think about it.”

The next step for the actress was to undergo chemotherapy and then have a hysterectomy, per her doctors. Despite her denial and fear, Barrett said the best way forward was just to face her fear vs. running from it. 

 “There’s no running from it because it’s my life. And eventually you just surrender because it’s so much bigger than anything you’ve ever faced,” she said. “I found this courage and I just hunkered down and said, ‘I’m going to face this.’”

Barrett also had to face the reality that she would lose her hair during chemo, but said she didn’t want to give the treatment method that power. The mother of 11-month-old twins Joshuah-Jireh and Ahnne-N’Urya took a razor to her own head before that could happen.

“My hair has always been an essence of beauty. But I took my own razor and I shaved my head. I did it in front of my babies so they’d see it was still Mommy,” she shared. “I wept, I wept, I wept. But it was a beautiful experience to do it in front of them.”

The mother and wife said her support system has been paramount in her fight. One of the people who make it up includes her husband, pastor Gavin Barrett, who serves at the Harvest Rock church in Pasadena, Calif.

I’m married to the most incredible man,” she said. “I get pins and needles in my limbs from the chemo and he’ll drop everything to give me foot and hand massages. He’s dropped everything just to give me love.”

Barrett has also found love and support from her colleagues at work. “I’ve had people shave their heads on set to support me,” she said. She is still trying her best to show up to set for Chicago Med despite not feeling the best physically. As she told the publication, “work brings me a lot of joy right now. It brings me a lot of reprieve to think about something other than, ‘When is my next chemo shift?’ and ‘How am I going to hug my children?’”

Barrett is preparing for her third round of chemo and is taking her circumstances, and life in general, “one day at a time.”

“I have a wave of emotion that comes,” she admitted. “But it’s okay not to have it all together. You can’t tangibly hold onto fear. But I’m holding onto faith.” Barrett added, “I find new strength to carry on every day because of [my children]. I want to see them get married one day. And I will.”

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