Cancer Supernova

I have decided to create this blog as a form of therapy. Since I know there are so many other women like me experiencing a similar situation, I figured a blog would help someone else somewhere, who, like me, has been googling themselves to death to find someone to relate to online. I am a victim of TNBC (triple negative breast cancer). So many online forums become abandoned, and questions go unanswered. People's 1st hand accounts are somewhat vague and lack the detail that I personally am longing for to cling to normality. So without further ado, here is my story. It's a long one, so you may decide to leave and check your Facebook instead. No offense taken :)

I am a 32 year old married mother of a 19 month old baby girl. I spent my younger childhood growing up on Long Island, NY until I moved out to Sacramento when I was about 13. I work for a bank as an Analyst, but really it's a fancy term for a clerk. My husband is in the car business and works late nights and every weekend. Can you hear the tiny violin? I loved my boring life of routine and uneventfulness. I had just registered for some classes to finish what I started on a business degree before I got pregnant. I wanted to take my daughter to swim lessons and maybe do a little home improvement. And then, life happened. A favorite and very appropriate quote from Mike Tyson: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." That's basically what happened. One June morning I lied in bed while my husband showered and decided to do a breast exam. My mother is an 8 year breast cancer survivor, so I knew early on that self exams are very important. I found the lump right away and figured it was just one of those, "common, but no big deal," things. Anyone who has Breast Cancer and is reading this right now, had to go through hearing that a few hundred times before the bomb was dropped on them, and that out of 80% of benign lumps, this one is cancer. We should have bought a lottery ticket, right?

Onto the smash machine (mammogram), the ultrasound and ultimately the biopsy needle. Three days later I get the call that it is in fact breast cancer. I'm referred to a surgeon who explains that although the tumor is tiny (<1.5 cm), it is in fact invasive and a high risk sub-type type based on my


pathology report:
Estrogen receptor: negative
Progesterone receptor: negative
HER2neu: negative
Furthermore...
Tubule formation score: 3
Nuclear pleomorphism score: 3
Mitotic count score: 3
Nottingham Histologic Score- Grade III 9 points

All signs point to super cancer. AKA (triple negative, high risk). It will not respond to hormone therapy since it does not feed off of hormones to grow. My only options are lots of chemo and radiation.

Being a knife happy surgeon, he wants to cut it out immediately, but we agreed to undergo a genetics test first to see if a gene mutation would explain the link between my mother and I both having pre-menapausal breast cancer. If a mutation is present we're looking at a bi-lateral mastectomy as well as the probability of a hysterectomy in my 40's. Regardless of the mutation I am definitely getting chemo since this type of cancer has a tendency to repair itself and return within 2 years. This genetics test took two whole weeks for a result which came out negative. The two weeks were gut wrenching. However, it didn't help answer any questions since there is obviously still a genetic link that science simply hasn't identified yet. Still, I opt out of the mastectomy because the idea of recovering from major surgery with a toddler made me cry myself to sleep at night. I could not imagine not being able to hold my baby or pick her up if she fell and hurt herself.

05/08/2012: For those of you recently diagnosed who may have stumbled across this blog, there is a new book recently published by a fellow triple negative survivor available on Amazon. If you are in the woods on what to decide for surgery and treatment, it might not be a bad place to start :)

Diagnosis: Breast Cancer