You were diagnosed with breast cancer really young — tell me about how you found out about your breast cancer.
It was June 14, and my husband and I were watching the basketball finals because we’re both avid sports fans. At some point during the game, I felt a knot. I was like, “Hmm” … so I’m feeling and feeling. I tap him, and I’m like, “Feel this.” He gets in there and starts squeezing around and looking, and both of us were like, “That’s a lump. That’s a for-real lump.” He was like, “Well, make sure you call and get a doctor’s appointment.” That’s pretty much my story. Literally the next day, we called the doctor’s office. While I was waiting for them to call me back, I started feeling other places, and I found another one under my arm.
I wasn’t super stressed out with this lump, but the one in my lymph node stressed me out. We went and got our mammogram done, and they did an ultrasound right behind it. On June 22, they confirmed that it was breast cancer — triple negative, ductal invasive carcinoma.
So you had surgery, and then you had chemo …
My physician’s plan of care wanted to do the chemo first. They said that they have had a much better response to doing the chemo first and getting that out the way, seeing how small they could shrink the actual tumor before the surgery. I had 20 weeks on board for chemo. About halfway through, I didn’t feel well. I was having shortness of breath really, really bad, so they stopped it for about three weeks. Total, it ended up being about 23, 24 weeks of chemo. I had to take two drugs for two and a half months. Then I took a third drug for 12 weeks on the back end. My last dose was December 5.