I beat cancer twice, then found out I had stage 4 breast cancer

My cancer story is a winding one. Some people are diagnosed with new metastatic breast cancer, which means they didn’t know about the cancer when it was at an early stage, but not me. When I was 22, I beat Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes. Then, when I was 27, I found out I had stage 1 breast cancer. I beat breast cancer too, but when I was 31, it became metastatic breast cancer (MBC), or stage IV.

I am now 36 years old and live in Georgia with my husband, Jesse, and our three dogs: Charlie, Lola, and Obi-Wan. Before I was diagnosed with MBC in November 2020, I told my breast cancer doctor that I wasn’t feeling well. I was short of breath even with the slightest change in position, such as when I lay down to go to bed. Although this was bothering me, my doctor told me not to worry about it and said I didn’t need a PET scan, an imaging test used to evaluate conditions like cancer. Many health care providers have told me to avoid scans over the years, saying, “You’ll see things that aren’t there and worry about them.” But I’d rather know than not know. My breast cancer doctor also said I shouldn’t waste my money, but I was like, “Well, I have insurance, so I’ll do what I can do.” It felt like she was almost demanding that I not log out. I was in the exam room under this pink bandana, almost naked, but I sat up straight and said to her, “I’m not leaving here until I’m scheduled to do some type of imaging.” I didn’t know what was going on with me, but I knew I wasn’t okay.

Eventually, she sent me for a bone scan and CT scan. Right after she called and said I needed a PET scan. I was like, “Are you kidding me?” So I did the scan, and then she said, “You need a lung biopsy.” At that point she was convinced that my Hodgkin’s lymphoma had to come back, not that my problems were in any way related to breast cancer. She told me to look for lymphoma specialists. Then I called again. The first thing she said was, “I haven’t been burned many times in my career, but this is one of them.” I asked what that meant. She replied, “Well, you have breast cancer that has spread to the lung and mediastinal lymph nodes.”