I’m a Breast Cancer Survivor

I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 35. No family history. Negative for the breast cancer gene. 

On Thanksgiving Day 2021, I felt some tingling in my breasts. My mind immediately jumped to, PREGNANT. As I felt myself up as aggressively as a high school boy, seeing if I was just imagining that tingle… I felt it. It was a long raised spot, almost like a clogged duct, but longer. 

Here’s the part I always wonder about: would I have called my doctor about it? I just so happened to have my annual gynecologist appointment the next week. I mentioned the spot to her, and she said it was probably nothing to worry about. I was less than a year and a half out from finishing nursing my youngest, so it was likely a milk duct had gotten inflamed. But instead of sending me on my way, she suggested a mammogram just to rule anything out. 

If you’re having a diagnostic mammogram (as opposed to a screening monogram), they also do an ultrasound. I wonder what it was like for the women in the room with me, looking at the screen, seeing the cancer. They all knew, and I just lay on the table without a care in the world. My doctor wasn’t worried, so neither was I. 

The next day was the St Jude race, and I did the 10K with some friends. Even telling them about the mammogram, and the biopsy of my breast and lymph node they scheduled for a few days after, I wasn’t worried. I was only 35! Nursing can reduce breast cancer risk, and I had just breastfed two kids for over a year each. There was no way I had breast cancer. My biggest fear was that the biopsy would be painful…

What a surprise I was in for. I got the call the day after the biopsy, on a Friday evening. That whole weekend is a surreal memory. There were some tears, but mostly disbelief. I had to call the radiologist who delivered the news and ask her to tell me everything all over again. 

On Monday, everything went into SuperDrive. Monday, my gynecologist got me in to see my breast surgeon, who got me in to meet my oncologist on Tuesday, who got me in for about a hundred tests over the next few days.  I had a CT scan to check for more cancer, a bone scan to test baseline bone density, an EkG for baseline heart performance, and a surgery to place a port in my chest. It’s a race to get everything in so you can start chemo. Many women also freeze their eggs before, since chemo often damages your eggs or fertility as a whole. Instead, I opted to get my eyebrows microbladed, which I highly recommend and wish I’d done years ago! 

Less than a month after my biopsy, I was starting chemo. I did 4 rounds of the red devil, notorious for being the hardest chemo out there. It’s also the hardest on hair. I was paying a small fortune to “cold cap,” where you don a frozen cap being pumped with liquid nitrogen at -30 degrees during chemo (and for an hour before and after). But the cold capping was no match for the red devil, and I lost 90% of my hair after those two months. Next I started 12 rounds of Taxol chemo, which works great with cold capping, so by the time I finished, I had a solid 1 inch of regrowth all over my head. 

I chose to have a double mastectomy, but I was crushed to find out I couldn’t have reconstruction right away. I was starting radiation after, and an implant or new breast would block the area they needed to blast. So I spent the next 9 months as flat as a pancake. Being flat wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, and I really ended up having no issue with it – though I acknowledge that might be because I knew I would eventually get to have reconstruction.

The hardest part was that they found cancer in even more lymph nodes during my mastectomy. This was actually a harder blow for me than the initial diagnosis, since it also meant more chemo. So I started 4 months of chemo pills and gave my crispy, burnt skin a few months to heal. 

I chose a type of reconstruction called Diep flap, where they use your abdominal tissue and skin to make breasts…very Frankenstein. I chose this partly because every surgeon said an implant had a high chance of failing with my radiated skin, but I had also spent so much time getting something OUT of my body, I didn’t really want to put a foreign object IN. This 10-hour surgery would be much more complicated and painful than my mastectomy, and I would have to travel for it.  No one in Memphis performs it because it is so specialized. I traveled to Atlanta for surgery, and had to be away from kids for two weeks while I recovered. 

Up to that point, I feel like my kids had been pretty insulated from cancer. While they knew what was happening, there hadn’t been much effect on them. I was still going to all the games, birthday parties, and school events. But that two weeks apart was hard on ALL of us.

Even though it’s been a year and half, my daughter still can’t fall asleep without me in the room (something she never did before surgery). This is just one more example of how cancer never really goes away. Even if it’s not in your body, its handprints are still all over our lives. 

Once you’ve had cancer, the fear of recurrence never really leaves. Neither do the constant doctors appointments, bloodwork. Even being “done” with active treatment, I’m 2 years into a decade of hormone therapy, have a 3rd reconstruction surgery next month, and am on some heavy hitting prevention medicines that are much harder on my body than chemo ever was. 

So do me, and yourself, a favor. Schedule that mammogram. Keep up with your annual appointments, and DO YOUR MONTHLY SELF EXAMS. Learn from my mistake. Breast cancer can happy to anyone, regardless or age or family history.

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