On September 5, 2019 my world stopped. Shifted. Changed. I was diagnosed with Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer. Everything I googled up until this point had told me that there were not many people to survive IBC. My first year of motherhood looked a lot different than most first time mothers. During the happiest time in my life I now needed to fight for it.
I started on a clinical trial that consisted of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and the clinical trial drug. Next up was a bilateral mastectomy because it was determined I had grown a different tumor in the opposite breast that was lobular ductal carcinoma. I had a 50% response to chemotherapy, which was a blow to us because I had already learned the statistics with inflammatory breast cancer. I cried for about 24 hours and then started a new adjuvant chemotherapy that had done well in clinical trials that I would be doing for 14 cycles. After I got my mastectomy drains removed and was able to get my arm up and over my head for the simulation and I began twice a day radiation at my cancer clinic.