Through Team Challenge, Brociner said, she has gained both confidence and a mental toughness that she lacked earlier in her life. And that was what helped her when life dealt her yet another devastating blow: Last Dec. 30, she learned she had breast cancer.

Following a bilateral mastectomy last month, she is now cancer-free. “I’m an optimistic person just in general; it didn’t throw me too much for a loop,” she said. “It’s just another challenge that I have to get through.”

A debilitating disease

Brociner recalled the trying times of her childhood in Oakdale, in Suffolk County, when she would often miss the school bus in the morning because she was in the bathroom. “The kids would be knocking at the door,” she recalled. “Here’s little Irene, still in the bathroom. It’s just the story of my life.

“That was my normal,” she added. “Just being in pain.”

Now married for 25 years and with two children, Brociner is no longer the shy child she once was. Indeed, it was her old bashfulness that motivated her to speak out.

Her daughter, Dara, 21, a recent Adelphi graduate, and son, Evan, 17, a junior at East Meadow High School, don’t have Crohn’s disease — which is believed to be hereditary — but could develop it in the future. “I don’t want her, or her future children, to live with these diseases,” she said of Dara. “They need to find a cure.”

The disorder affects as many as 700,000 Americans, according to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, and is most prevalent among those between ages 15 and 35. There is no single known cause, with current research suggesting that hereditary, genetic or environmental factors lead to its development.

Though many with Crohn’s require corrective surgery, Brociner has not. And while she is currently off medication and has been able to manage the disease, she occasionally battles dehydration, fatigue and weight loss — common side effects of Crohn’s — and has been hospitalized for up to a week at a time, most recently in 2012.