Four women under age 40 reveal how they found and fought breast cancer and lived to tell the tale. These four women lead very different lives, but they all have one thing in common: They developed breast cancer at a young age. They discovered community within the Young Survival Coalition, a national organization dedicated to providing support to young women with breast cancer-- and raising awareness of the disease in women under 40. Jeannette Garcia, 33 I had been without health insurance for three years and finally decided to get insurance on my own last year. After that, I went in to see my gynecologist to get a regular annual exam, and she felt the lump. My mom is a breast cancer survivor -- she was diagnosed in 2003 -- so the doctors took it seriously. I went in the next day for a mammogram and ultrasound, which found some abnormal things in the right breast. So they sent me in for a biopsy, and two days later, I got the results: It was cancer. And later they confirmed it was in my lymph nodes, too. I already knew a lot about what would happen since I'd been through it with my mom, but it's a lot different when it's you! The doctors wanted to start me right away on a standard chemotherapy regimen for younger women, called AC-T (Adriamycin and Cytoxan, followed by Taxol), but since I'm single and haven't had kids yet, I wanted to make sure I would be able to get pregnant someday. I knew that these drugs were toxic to fertility, and although my oncologist thought I'd still be fertile, there's a percentage of women who aren't. Fertility and Chemo So the doctors put me in touch with fertility specialists, and I spent four weeks getting eggs harvested and frozen before I started chemo. Chemo wasn't as awful as it was for my mom, because I was on a newer drug called Emend [a medicine for chemo-related nausea and vomiting]. Without it I probably would have been a mess, but with Emend, I didn't really get sick. I got a little nauseous during my last two treatments, but even then, it wasn't really bad. In March 2010, a few months after I finished chemo, I had an 11-hour surgery to do the bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction. I worked through all my chemo but took six weeks off after surgery, and now I'm back at work. There are still some procedures to do, but I'm almost done. I can't wait to be there. It's all been pretty expensive. I have a PPO plan and have to pay 30% of everything, so I'll probably be in debt for the rest of my life, but at least I have my life. I have my days where I get tired still, or just get frustrated with the whole process. Growing out my hair is really hard -- being bald was easier! It's messed with my confidence level a lot, but I'm trying to gain that back now. It's been a long journey. You see life in a different light -- it's just too short for the little stuff. I think I've changed for the better. Joye Beachum, 36 I was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer in the spring of 2009, two weeks before my first wedding anniversary. I had felt "something" as far back as January, but I wasn't sure if it really was anything. I took off work later on for some oral surgery, and while I was off, I thought I'd get it checked out. The doctor said he felt something, but told me, "Don't worry about it. You're too young and you don't have a family history." So I didn't worry. But then the needle biopsy he did in his office and a mammogram both came back inconclusive, so he sent me for a core biopsy and an ultrasound. When I went for that, I saw something on the monitor and it freaked me out. It made it real. Less than a week later, I got the phone call -- at work, no less. "I'm so sorry, it's cancer." I was inconsolable. Even remembering it is hard now. My first thought was that I was going to die. I have a daughter who's 20 now, and she was just about to graduate from college in Oregon. I didn't want to tell her. I didn't want to stop her momentum -- she was doing so well. And at that point I couldn't really talk about it without being hysterical. Deciding Not to Have Chemo So I went to her graduation and didn't tell her, and a couple of days later I had the surgery. The results were pretty good: The tumor was 1.4 centimeters and they got "clear margins" -- meaning they got all the cancer. They took out 11 lymph nodes, but none was cancerous. My doctor wanted me to have chemotherapy because of my age. I was terrified of it. She did a newer test called the Oncotype DX, which tells if you're high, low, or intermediate risk and helps you decide about chemo. I was at the lower end of the risk scale, but still at every pause she'd say to me, "You need to do chemo. You're so young, and we want to fight this with everything we have." But I just couldn't. I thought of everything it would involve, and I just couldn't face chemo. I wanted someone to give me firm numbers, but all I could get was, "We don't know." So instead I just had the full course of radiation, and worked pretty much all through that. Right after I had surgery, I told my daughter. We were on the phone, and she said, "Mom, you seem so distracted -- something's wrong and you're not telling me." I had to tell her. She cried, but she was really more upset that I hadn't told her sooner. She felt like I had decided for her whether or not she would be there for me. It's brought us closer together. We used to talk on the phone a couple of times a week, and now it's every day. Betrayed by Her Body Life is starting to seem normal now, but I'm still struggling with the grieving process over having cancer. I was taking care of myself and doing everything right, had no family history, and this? It's hard to trust again when you've been betrayed. If someone does something to hurt you, you can cut them out of your life. But the thing that betrayed me was my body! I'm on tamoxifen for five years, although I will probably take a break next year to try to have a baby. After everything my husband showed me during this past year, I know I want to have a child together. He made it so much easier. I wasn't worried about how I looked. He let me have the breakdowns and the bad days, and I knew he wasn't going anywhere. But I think I need a new doctor, because it feels like she's treating the disease, not treating me. When I mention kids, she says, "Don't focus on that, focus on treatment." But at this age, I have to think about that. You still have to live. You can't give up your dreams. I can't live in fear of recurrence. Lucretia Smith, 31 When I was pregnant with my fourth child, in late 2008, I felt a lump. It was hard and it wasn't moving, and was almost on my ribs. My doctor told me he thought it was an infection and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic. But after my daughter was born, it was still there, and a friend told me I really needed to go see about it. I went to see my primary care doctor, and he felt it and knew right away it was a problem. After my mammogram, the radiologist went out and the head doctor came in with a box of tissues, so I kind of knew. The biopsy confirmed it was cancer and because of the size, they at first said it was stage II and that it was probably in the lymph nodes as well. So I had a lumpectomy and had started chemotherapy when I started having pains in my body from something unrelated. So when I went to the doctor, as a precaution, they did an abdominal CT scan and found cancer in my liver. So now I was stage IV. Metastatic Breast Cancer With Young Children I freaked out. I started doing research on the web, which is horrible! You read all of these scary things. My doctor stopped the chemo and sent me to a doctor at Georgetown University Hospital [in Washington, D.C.] to see if I would be a candidate for a liver resection. I was, and in July 2009, I had the surgery, which was successful. Now I'm in a weird place: I'm stage IV, but I don't have any detectable cancer. I'm on tamoxifen, and I get scans every three months. So far, they've been clean. My youngest is 2, but my older children are 8, 10, and 14. They know a lot. I try not to scare them, but I'm up front about it. I don't want them to be angry with me later because I haven't told them the truth. Knowing you have metastatic disease is really a lot of ups and downs. The further out you go, it's both scary and relieving. I was told before I had my surgery that I had a 30% chance of being alive in five years and -- wow -- it's almost a year and a half now. I'm doing well, but you see how quickly it can turn and it freaks you out. But I guess it makes you a little more able to do the things you want to do. Ordinarily you put stuff off, but I'm in the acceptance stage now. I've started back to school for computer science, and I've been traveling a little bit, which I never did before. Some of my travels are for breast cancer conferences. I went to a conference for women with metastatic disease, and there were women there who'd had it for 15 years. A large group raised their hand when asked who'd had metastatic disease for at least 10 years. So that's hopeful. My doctor, I think he thought it was going to come back right away, and the further out I go, the more optimistic he is. Patty Hemmelgarn, 33 My mom had breast cancer when I was 8, and I think I always kind of figured, yeah, I'll get cancer when I'm older. But it never occurred to me that I had a risk as a young woman. Even though Mom had it when she was 38, no one really explained to me that I might get it young, too. Then she had a recurrence when I was 26, and three years later, when I was 29, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer right after she had my nephew. She died when her son was 18 months old. And I realized that I was at risk now. I actually had planned on getting mastectomies after having children. I gave birth to my daughter, Tessa, who's now 3, and everything looked fine at my six-week checkup. But two weeks later, my husband found a lump in my breast. A Family History of Breast Cancer I'd been having mammograms since I was 24, but I didn't think it was possible that two sisters could both get diagnosed right after having a baby. Even the surgeon thought it probably wasn't cancer -- but it was. I knew right away what I would do. I had the option of a lumpectomy, but I said absolutely not! So I had a bilateral mastectomy and had implants put in -- 16 days after diagnosis, right after Christmas -- and then did four rounds of chemotherapy. After I was done with treatment, I got my genetic test results back. Before testing, they had put my entire family's cancer history through a computer model to determine how likely it was that I would have a cancer-causing genetic mutation, and the counselor said that I had the highest score she'd ever seen. I would have been surprised if I didn't have a mutation, and it did turn out that I'm BRCA1 positive. So I had my ovaries removed as well, since my husband and I had decided we were going to be happy with just one child. Having lost my sister, Tracy, when her son was just 18 months old, and then going through the exact same scenario when I was diagnosed, was really scary. I'm still dealing with those fears of recurrence and the survivor's guilt. She was like my second mom, and I don't know if I'll ever get over it. And it's hard with my nephew ... his mom's not here, and I am. How do I explain it to him when he's old enough to ask? It's hard to imagine that it's not going to come back, or that I'm going to die at age 80 of a heart attack. That'd be great, but honestly in my mind I don't see it happening. I clearly remember being 10 years old and my mom being on the kitchen floor, crying, because she had to take her tamoxifen and she didn't want to. The one time my mom and I really did talk about it, she talked about her regret of carrying it all with her for so long and not being able to let go. She wished she hadn't spent so much time worrying about it and not being able to enjoy her life. I'm struggling with that now. So on May 1, the two-year anniversary of my last chemo treatment, I ran a half-marathon to celebrate. I'm finding my way back to my life. But I know it will never be the same. Source
