Ground Zero

I call this ground zero, as this is the week that lays the foundation for everything I am about to experience. But let’s start with how we got here. Februar 21st, 2025 I went for my routine mammogram on my day off and the next morning, I received my usual “Normal” letter in the portal. They next day, my phone rang repeatedly, and the caller finally left a message asking me to schedule my imaging. I was so confused and called back to tell them I had already had my mammogram. That was when they informed me that the letter was in error and I had had an abnormal detection in my images.

I didn’t sweat this too much at the time but scheduled the additional imaging and ultrasound as soon as possible because I assumed this was just a case of dense tissue and that this was just precautionary. I wanted it off of my plate. March 13th my next round of imaging was completed and the radiologist told me he was highly suspicious of the mass based on the clustering that was seen. Fortunately, my lymph nodes looked clear. Next step was biopsy, and fortunately they were able to get me in on March 17th. I am not a patient person. We had a birthday dinner planned that evening for my daughter’s 17th birthday. At this point, the radiologist was leaning towards Ductal Carcinoma In Site (DCIS) which is a noninvasive, Stage 0 diagnosis.

The biopsy was relatively uneventful and painless. It was ultrasound guided under local anesthesia, the entire procedure lasting maybe 20 minutes. I was soon on my way with some steri-strips and a tiny ice pack. I did bruise pretty badly several days later and was tender but nothing that was unmanageable. The wait for results was more painful than the procedure. I was able to make it to the birthday dinner with a smile on my face and feeling hopeful that this was a best-case scenario and still hopeful it would be benign.

Wednesday, March 19th was the day of the dreaded call. My daughter was still upstairs preparing for school, so I had to absorb all the following words without losing any composure. “It IS cancer, but we need to wait on additional tests to make sure it is NOT invasive”. So, there I had the first punch, and it would be another day until the additional results arrived. As I awaited those results (Immunohistochemistry stains that detect specific markets in the tumor), I decided to finally let my family know. I had held all of this from them until I knew for sure because I didn’t want to put them through needless worry. That part was the hardest, especially with my children. My parents almost looked shocked as if they never expected their child would be facing this. The next day my full report came in, and I was upgrade to Stage 1 DCIS with INVASIVE carcinoma, ER/PR positive, HER2 negative. Although worse than I was planning on, overall, it was a better scenario than it could have been.

Now what does this mean? With a cancer diagnosis, you find yourself become quickly becoming familiar with oncology terminology. Now this gets intimate, so if this sort of stuff bothers you, keep scrolling. To summarize, it means:

• The presence of DCIS means part of the tumor was still confined to the milk ducts (non-invasive), but some cells have spread beyond the ducts into the surrounding breast tissue, making it invasive. Since it is Stage 1, the invasive portion is still small and localized.

ER/PR-Positive:

• The cancer cells have estrogen and progesterone receptors, meaning they rely on hormones to grow. This makes the cancer likely to respond well to hormone therapy, which can reduce the risk of recurrence.

HER2-Negative:

• The cancer does not overexpress the HER2 protein, meaning HER2-targeted therapies (like Herceptin) are not needed. This is generally considered a favorable finding, as HER2-negative cancers often have better long-term outcomes when hormone receptor-positive.

So now that we covered the medical jargon, Ground Zero is the place where all the emotions and information come flooding in at once. It’s the place where you feel motivated to tackle all the research and planning one minute, and the next you are sunken down in a corner trying to cut off the noise. A cancer diagnosis sucks all the air out of the room and narrows your window of perspective on the future very quickly. I felt paralyzed in the day, with no idea what the next day would bring. I promised myself that day, that no matter what would come, I would wake up every day, shower, and get dressed, and if that was all I did, that was enough.

The range of emotions is incredible. You feel so supported and loved by the people around you and feel completely alone at the same time. You enter a period of self-blame. What did I do to cause this? You Google when you know you shouldn’t and thank goodness for ChatGPT to help you worry even faster in the modern era. The amount of people reaching out with their experiences, suggestions and physician recommendations is both amazing and overwhelming at the same time. I highly recommend you take it all and then take your time to sort through what you find most helpful… tuck the rest away for later. You will swim in information, in trying to determine next steps and in what your care team will consist of for this journey. The vain person in me immediately became crushed at the prospect of losing my breast(s), my hair, my quality of life. But if that is the path to a cure, then I have to put my big girl panties on and buckle up. Losing this fight will never be an option.

My surgical consult was scheduled very quickly (March 25th), and this will be the first step in laying out a treatment plan. I think a lot of my anxiety will subside when I have a plan, a care team and timelines in place so I can begin to prepare for what is to come. In the interim, I have completely tossed my diet upside down, eliminating anything that fuels cancer. I am guzzling water and planting my own veggies to try and be as clean as I can. I have started intermittent fasting to starve the tumor and have implemented all means to trigger apoptosis and autophagy.

I really wrestled with being public with this story, but this blog is really therapeutic for me, is a way to keep loved ones updated, and will hopefully be a source of inspiration for other women who come behind me. For now, I am going to dig into the mound of medical paperwork sent to me today. I have about 14 tasks to do ahead of the 25th and hope to decompress a bit this weekend.