In August 2023, I turned 35 years old. My son was on his way to kindergarten and the fog of my early 30s was beginning to clear. Everything was falling into place, but somehow I was exhausted all the time and I was losing weight faster than I ever had before. Eventually, the weight loss shifted from “have you been working out?” To “are you feeling okay?”, and then I felt them. A lump in my neck and another just under my right armpit. It was time to see my doctor and soon I was on my way to the Breast Care Centre at St. Joseph’s Healthcare for my first ever mammogram….about a decade sooner than expected.

In November, I visited the Breast Care Centre for the first time. A standard screening mammogram turned into a full day of being scanned and rescanned and then pulled into an ultrasound room with two technicians and a radiologist. The radiologist giving direction to measure something on the screen, shaking her head, motioning to the technicians to go further. The feeling in the room changed. There was silence. I knew. I left that day with instructions to come back for a biopsy the next day and a requisition marked “urgent”.

I spent the months leading up to Christmas going back to St. Joseph’s for tests. In December, my son turned 5 years old, we celebrated Christmas with our family and my doctor called to tell me that I have breast cancer. 

In January I stopped working. I felt as though I became my diagnosis. 35 year old female, right sided locally advanced invasive ductal carcinoma, stage 3, grade 3. I met my surgeon and I started collecting new complications and specialists. PICC line blood clot? Enter hematology. Eight rounds of adjunctive dose dense chemotherapy? Well, that’s medical oncology. Autoimmune brainstem encephalitis? Welcome to Neurology. Surgeons, Radiation Oncology, inpatient oncology, outpatient injection clinic, LHSC, St. Joseph’s…..around and around I went and I brought my friends and family with me. My life changed and so did the lives of everyone around me, and we aren’t even finished yet. On the day of the CIBC run for the cure, I will hopefully have started radiation therapy and be one step closer to finding a new normal.

Some might say that a breast cancer diagnosis at 35 is unlucky. I would agree. It really does suck the big one. In the context of “cancer patient” though, I have been very lucky. I am lucky to live in London and to have access to the Breast Care Centre at St. Joseph’s and the Verspeeten Family Cancer Centre at LHSC. I am lucky that the people who came before me put in the work so that I have the treatment options I do. I have been lucky that ever since my initial diagnosis I have been flooded with questions:

“What do you need?”

“What can I do?”

“How can I help?”

Until now, I haven’t known what to say because I’m struggling with the same questions. What can I do? 

I know what I need. I need to be here to raise my son. For that to happen, I’m going to need options. For there the be options, we need to fund the research today. I know first hand the impact of research. Classified as “very high risk”, I am eligible for a drug therapy that patients just five years ago didn’t have. This option is only available to me because of the generosity of donors and events like this one. 

So, what can I do? I can do this. I can share my story, and I can support the teams that are going to improve outcomes for the next family.  

So - to anyone wanting to know what I need, or how to help, or what to do: Run with me, support our team, support any team really. We can do this.