Moms Don’t Get Sick

When my doctor said the word “cancer,” it wasn’t like the movies where the camera zooms in on your face, or your doctor starts sounding like a teacher from peanuts. I immediately thought to myself “okay, we just cut it out and I’m fine”. He told us we would be moving this conversation to his office where he would explain to us what the next steps were. In the following hour I was told I had a rare and aggressive type of breast cancer called Inflammtory Breast Cancer.

Inflammatory Breast Cancer accounts for 0.5 to 2% of breast cancers. It is usually found in younger women, younger being 40 to 50s. The cancer starts in the milk ducts and can mimic the symptoms of a breast infection like mastitis (“Inflammatory Breast Cancer.” National Cancer Institute, https://www.cancer.gov/types/breast/ibc-fact-sheet.). When my symptoms started I was breastfeeding my son and I was no stranger to clogged ducts and breast infections. When the lump first appeared we assumed it was just another funky thing my broken boob decided to do. I had breastfed babies two and three, and exclusively pumped for baby one. Each time, I acquired multiple cases of mastitis and could have been crowned clogged duct queen of 2016, 2018, and 2022. So for me, my breasts being a pain in my ass was not unusual. I love true crime, but being told the killer was calling from inside the house was not the thriller I was expecting.

Sam (my husband) and I spent the next few hours holding a wiggling baby and being told our lives were about to be completely turned upside down. We went from the breast specialist to the cancer center to be told how we were going to treat my cancer. When we got there, we were quickly stopped at the door and informed our baby was not allowed in the building and I was to go meet my oncologist alone.That’s when I broke. I finally began to realize how real this was. I had cancer. We didn’t know how bad it was but when you hear “cancer” you immediately imagine the worst case scenario. Here I was, immediately being told I would have to do this without my husband and baby. I had known for a whole 90 minutes that I had cancer and I immediately felt isolated.

I don’t know how I managed to put one foot in front of the other, but I found myself sitting alone in a room with an oncologist and a nurse in a cancer center. Pardon my french but really, how the fuck did I get here? I am 28 years old. I am a mother to 3 kids under the age of 6. My husband was a year away from finishing his 7 year journey of becoming a doctor. My family had no history of cancer…mental health issues, sure…but we were a bunch of nut jobs with not a single case of cancer. I realized it was happening. I was currently experiencing that “this can’t happen to us” moment. Those moments that are incomprehensible because in your mind you’re invincible. We have worked too hard to achieve our dreams and goals to have them be threatened now.

After I had my small (but understandable) panic attack, my doctor continued to explain to me how this was going to work. For some breast cancer patients surgery is the first step, but because my type of breast cancer had developed into a rash that meant that chemotherapy was necessary before any surgery.

That was the word that hit me the hardest. Chemotherapy. It was no longer a problem we could just “cut out.”

Inflammatory Breast Cancer is usually found once the rash on the skin appears. Because of this, IBC is almost always at least a stage three cancer. This is not a “cut out” cancer. This was a “be sick, lose your hair, and fight for your life” cancer. My doctor told me I was stage three for now and we would be doing a long list of tests to see if the cancer had moved anywhere else in my body. The most common response would have been to crawl into a ball and focus on how unfair this situation was. But at that moment I decided, it wasn’t anywhere else…it was just in my breast…and I was going to beat it.