Content warning: Cancer, medical, illness
I was diagnosed a few weeks ago with breast cancer stage 4. It’s a very serious and aggressive cancer, so I’m spending most of my time and energy just trying to get better.
Tumblr lets me write longer format journaling, so I thought I’d get into some more of the real facts and feelings than I might expose on other platforms. If that is not your thing, I get it. It’s mostly for me.
First thing people want to know but they’re afraid to ask about is the morbid stuff. I wish I had a clear answer, but it’s hard to tell at this point. Stage 4 is bad, but better than it was years ago. I might live a year, I might live 5 or 20 years. I might live a natural lifespan. This all depends on how well chemo works against my cancer. The doctor described remission as “unlikely” but not impossible. What he said is that I could need chemo for the rest of my life, but that modern treatments may make it possible to live a normal life even if the treatment continues.
Second thing people seem to want to know, but they may feel it’s insensitive to ask: when was it caught? How could you and your doctors miss such a serious cancer?
What I know about it is that I had a surgery for an unrelated issue last year, and there was no flag raised about any cancer back then. So the very farthest back it could before I first felt it was maybe 6 months, being generous.
In April 2025, I went in for a mammogram because I noticed a lump on my breast that hadn’t been there to my knowledge as little as 2 weeks prior, and it was pretty big. I went to the coordinator for my endo study group, because they needed a mamo from me anyway. The doctor said the mammogram and his breast inspection didn’t show enough characteristics of cancer to be at risk. I got a big letter that said “benign” on it. So I sighed some relief and went back to not worrying about it.
It didn’t cause me any alarm until August, I started feeling another lump, this time in the lymph node. It was squishy and movable, so I assumed it was a cyst or something. I also noticed my left hip hurting a lot, and not getting better with rest.
I have endometriosis, which is a chronic pain condition, so the presence of pain in my hips and meds I take for that often mask other stuff going on with me.
At this point I had just lost my insurance, couldn’t get back on marketplace until November. I couldn’t just book a mammogram. So I went to an urgent care clinic and paid to have a doctor check it out and get an opinion. The doctor just poked it a bit. I told her about the other big lump, and how it was growing. She said it didn’t seem like anything of alarm, and to go to the ER if it was swelling or I had a fever. They didn’t give me any X-rays, blood tests, or anything. I don’t know if getting those things would have caught it, but I left feeling very disappointed. I could not afford the ER and couldn’t justify going unless something changed.
Now it’s September, and the thing that changed was the supposedly benign tumor started pushing up through my skin. I panic-googled and saw a bunch of “that’s cancer” results, so I called my study doctor again to see if they could move up my next mamo, which had been scheduled all the way in October.
They were able to do that for me free of cost, which was great. But still, weird. Even at the scan they were telling me “it’s probably nothing” and “it’s probably just the endo” and lots of reassurance. In hindsight, I think they were just trying to console my panic, but it was a disservice in the end.
My study coordinator (not the doctor) called a few days later in a panic saying this looks bad, real bad. I need a biopsy asap. She could schedule one the next week.
I get the biopsy, then I call a lot asking where are the results? Almost another full week, I finally get results. It is cancer. Now I need a review from an oncologist. But the doctor reassured me again, to him it looks like I just need few months of chemo, I’ll be fine. I’m relieved again. I tell my family I have cancer, but it’s not the bad cancer.
Additional context for this entire time period: I’m trying to get married to my fiance who lives in Canada, and I’m moving up there asap so that we can finally live together. We booked an oncologist before we left to make sure no time is wasted, and we consult the doctor before leaving. We ask, how serious does it look? Will waiting one week to move make any significant difference? He says, the soonest he could get someone in the US to see me is two weeks minimum anyway, so it doesn’t seem like a problem. We decide to go.
We see a private doctor in Canada asap. He sets us up with a PET scan asap. To the credit of the Canadian healthcare system, this part was fast and the clinic was very helpful.
If I had more foresight powers, I might have noticed the Canadian oncologist blinking weirdly and asking things like “interesting…” whenever we told him the US doctor’s take on the situation.
Then his assistant strongly advised us to start calling hospitals and being proactive about finding one ASAP because recently, it’s been difficult. They could do scans and biopsy and surgery, but not chemotherapy. That could only be handled by a hospital.
Apparently there is a huge influx of people entering Canada in hope of getting medical assistance because of the political situation here, and they are overrun. The acceptance had become strict. My spouse was shocked that even as his wife; they’d just say no. Not until the visa is processed and health card is in your hand. We offered to pay out of pocket, or do anything so that I could stay there, but the few clinics that would allow it were full.
On the 16th we got the PET scan, and as soon as the doctor opened it, I was aghast. The scan was lit up with cancer all over my body when I had been told this looked like a common thing like what my mom and grandma had before. He pointed to so much of my chest covered, the hip, the femur, the liver. I was so out of it, I didn’t even know what to say.
My spouse had the wherewithal to ask “what stage is it?” The doctor said, it’s stage 4. Like we should have known, or like it was obvious.
He said I had to get to any hospital that would take me, and go as fast as I could.
Fortunately I was approved for Alabama Medicaid on emergency breast cancer basis, otherwise idk what I would have done. I would be screwed. This covers any cancer-related procedure.
My dad and stepmom offered me to stay with them while I’m getting the treatment. But, my spouse can’t come. He can’t leave his job in Canada. He just signed a lease for an apartment that we were supposed to be living in. We are separated again after we finally figured it all out. It was crushing.
I went back to Alabama the very next flight, and then it became a matter of getting the doctors here to understand how dire the condition was.
I’d talk to a receptionist and she’d say “how about we get you in next month?” And I’d say “I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t HAVE a month. I need to be for consultation in next business day, or you will have to let me call another clinic.”
Managed to get one that Tuesday, not Monday, but still pretty good.
Keeping up with the timeline, it’s Oct 21st when I see them. Finally the doctors are like yeah, this is serious, we need this right away, and everything is rolling.
So that’s a process of about 5 months between be going “oh, I feel a lump” to finally, we are starting your treatment now. I don’t know if that is an unusual turn around time. Never done this before. I’d like to think that it’s the rare and unusually fast-growing nature of my cancer, especially in someone my age, that led them to being so confident about saying it would be super treatable, and fine.
All I know is I did what I was supposed to do. I checked my breast and I went to a doctor.
Tired now. More of the story and hopefully more uplifting feelings when I post again.
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