In October of 2019, the month I turned 30, I was shaving my armpit one morning when I felt some pain. I stopped and felt around, and I felt a large lump that I could move around in my armpit. I was startled. When I was 25, I found out I had the BRCA1 mutation because my dad tested positive for it, so I got tested. I was advised to have preventative mastectomies at age 35, and to get rotating mammograms and MRIs twice a year until then, which I had kept up with diligently. I worked at a hospital, so I had the ultrasound tech take a look at my armpit. She told me that it was a lymph node and that the lymph node looked “angry”. I thought maybe I had a virus or something, I had never been advised to feel around in my armpits as well to feel for breast cancer. I waited a couple of weeks until it was time for my yearly MRI. On November 15, the MRI came back that the lymph node appeared suspicious for malignancy. I immediately called my breast surgeons office and she got me in that day. She said it’s definitely cancer, after looking at it, but needed to biopsy still. I got the call on November 18, that it was definitely breast cancer and that I would need a medical oncologist, chemo, mastectomies, radiation. Two days later I had a PET scan which showed I had only one lymph node affected and my original breast tumor was less than a cm and was close to my chest wall, where I couldn’t feel it. I also found out my cancer was triple-negative (no surprise). I started chemo the next week, Adriamycin and Cytoxin every 2 weeks 4 times, and I would be receiving Taxol for 12 weeks weekly and adding Carboplatin in there every few weeks since I was BRCA+. I was devastated. I had a 16 month old at the time and was so scared I wouldn’t get to see him grow up. I was able to make it through all the treatments, except we discontinued the Carboplatin because I needed platelets and blood transfusions from it. In May of 2020, I had my mastectomies and found out that I had a complete pathological response to chemo, meaning that the cancer would not come back. I was ecstatic. I did 6 weeks of radiation after that. Because of all this, my 2 sisters who were 20 and 22 at the time, got tested and were both able to get preventative mastectomies. Apparently, breast cancer runs earlier in my family than the usual age that people get breast cancer with BRCA. Today, 3 years later, I am cancer free and thriving!
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