Time to Share my Journey with Breast Cancer

Now that I’m feeling a bit more like myself and have a long wait for my next step. I think it’s time that I share my journey of surviving breast cancer this year, in hopes of helping other women get detected early.

When I turned 40 I began my yearly mammograms. I was told I had extremely dense breast tissue but that was about it on the subject. Got the all clear and waited till the next year with an all clear again. In 2020 I noticed something in my right breast and since it was that time of the year again I did another routine mammogram and that time they also ordered an ultrasound, because I had a physical lump . They couldn’t see anything concerning and said it was dilated ducts and fibrocystic changes. No biggie. Life went on.

Well we moved shortly after that in 2020, COVID hit, most things down, I took my time (really I put off) establishing new doctors and did not do my mammogram in 2021 but scheduled one in February 2022.

After that mammogram I got a call back that they wanted to do additional images because they saw some possible calcifications in one area. I did multiple images on one area and then an ultrasound.  The tech could not see anything in the area she was designated to look at. For what ever reason she moved to a different area and something caught her attention. They ordered a biopsy and a breast MRI.

In March this year, the biopsy pathology came back, Invasive Ductal Carcinoma (IDC) as well as Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS). The IDC was a small area (11mm) and considered low grade, which means it was not aggressive nor fast spreading. My heart sank, to hear that I had breast cancer, I was in a state of shock for a while.

I met with a breast surgeon and was optimistic about the outcome and chose to do a lumpectomy and just have the tumor removed. Well, about a week later I got the results back from the MRI and they detected three additional suspicious areas. I went in for yet more biopsies.

The results from those biopsies was a second IDC mass (5mm) in the same breast and two very small satellite masses around the original mass. Then the kicker was it was also in my other breast, yet another type of cancer, Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC). It was like being diagnosed all over again, 2 weeks apart from each other. So now I have breast cancer in both my breasts and 3 different kinds of cancer. How did this happen?

Luckily all areas were considered low grade, small tumor size and stage 1. The crazy thing was the area I felt back in 2020 that was considered benign was now the ILC. Could it have been caught 2 years ago? I’ll never know I guess.

On May 4 (May the 4th be with you is how we will forever remember the date) I had a double mastectomy with the start of reconstruction. Recovery was brutal and way more than I had imagined. It knocked me down, plus I had some blood flow complications (more on that later) but now that I am 3 months post-op I’m feeling pretty good. Next step is my final reconstruction with implants in October.

I will continue to share as I can, I’m not one for doing this so writing it out does not come natural for me. But I want to share so that I encourage others to be proactive, get checked regularly and if you have ever been told you have dense breast tissue please please request an ultrasound in addition to your mammogram. It literally might have just saved my life.