{"id":98153,"date":"2026-01-03T03:16:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T03:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/densebreastscanada.ca\/?p=98153"},"modified":"2026-01-03T03:16:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T03:16:25","slug":"marissa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/densebreastscanada.ca\/fr\/marissa\/","title":{"rendered":"Marissa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do YOU know your breast category?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What still blows my mind is that I made it into my 40s without ever hearing anything about breast density.<\/p>\n

My story started during a routine physical when the doctor massaged my left breast and said, \u201cWe could say this might be something\u2026 that\u2019ll at least get you in for a mammogram. I like all my women over 40 to have one.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t even convinced she felt anything. She just wanted me screened because I had just turned 41 and she didn\u2019t want \u201cthe system\u201d hassling her.<\/p>\n

Her improv saved my life.<\/p>\n

And the irony of it all is this:
\nThe referral was for my left<\/strong> breast.
\nCancer turned up in my right<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I was sent for my very first mammogram on my left breast only, and I remember thinking it was strange to only image one<\/em> breast. I learned that breast density is categorized on a continuum from fatty to extremely dense \u2014 and the denser the breast, the trickier it is to see cancer. I fell into the \u201cextremely dense\u201d category, which earned me a golden ticket to get a mammogram on my right breast two weeks later. Without that one off-hand referral, I would never have known any of this.<\/p>\n

One year later, I felt a \u201clump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Except it didn\u2019t feel like a lump at all.
\nHonestly, it felt like a rib \u2014 long, hard, cylindrical \u2014 right where my breast meets my sternum.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t worried. I was totally confident it was some weird cyst. A \u201cwelcome\u201d gift to complement the other lumps and bumps I was acquiring on my entrance into middle age. I had no first-degree relatives with breast cancer, and although not perfect, I subscribed to a pretty healthy lifestyle. Cancer was in no way on my radar.<\/p>\n

The lump seemed to come out of nowhere, and had its size not been so impressive, I likely would have ignored it. I went for a mammogram and ultrasound, and they told me right then I would be moving on to a biopsy.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even enjoy touching it; it weirded me out. It wasn\u2019t until my mom asked me about it that I got curious in the shower. Raising my right arm over my head, I felt deeper around my breast, really getting in there\u2026 and there it was: a second lump opposite the first.
\nThe kind we\u2019re all taught to look for \u2014 round, gumball-like, in the fullness of the breast \u2014 the classic sign no one wants to find.<\/p>\n

At the biopsy appointment, the radiologist introduced herself and asked kindly, \u201cHave you met your care team yet?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I laughed: \u201cOh no, I\u2019m just here for a biopsy.\u201d<\/em>
\nShe stared at me for a moment too long \u2014 a look I recognized from my days in corporate. Someone, clearly, had dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

After she sampled both lumps, she showed me my mammogram and ultrasound report. At the top, in all caps, it read:<\/p>\n

\u201cPLEASE BRING TO THE ATTENTION OF THE REFERRING PHYSICIAN\/PRACTITIONER.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then she scrolled to the part that said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis imaging result indicates a high probability of malignancy. Even if this biopsy is negative, further evaluation by a Breast Surgeon is required. The Calgary Breast Health Program has been notified. Please make an immediate referral.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d better call your clinic and see how that referral is going.\u201d
\nGotcha.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s funny is I STILL walked out of there convinced it wasn\u2019t going to be anything.<\/p>\n

But as the week dragged on with no results, I became anxious. I recalled a nurse mentioning something about a health portal, so I figured I\u2019d poke around and see what was in there.<\/p>\n

There, plain as day, sat my results\u2026 which had been posted the same day as my biopsy a week prior<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

No one had called me.<\/p>\n

I scanned through the medical jargon, and then I found it:<\/p>\n

Pathology Results: Invasive breast carcinoma with lobular features.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what this means!!! Is this what you had?<\/em>\u201d I needed to call it in and phone a friend\u2026one who knew cancer. My girlfriend Krissy carries the BRCA1 gene (a mutation that raises lifetime breast cancer risk) and was diagnosed in 2020. Five years later, she\u2019s owning her survivorship \u2014 and now she was guiding me into mine.<\/p>\n

Sitting on the sofa with my husband beside me and Krissy on speakerphone, I did what most women do in today\u2019s tech landscape \u2014 I copied the text into ChatGPT and asked it to translate the medical jargon into plain speak.<\/p>\n

Yep. ChatGPT told me I had cancer.<\/p>\n

And honestly, I\u2019m grateful for it.<\/p>\n

Some people believe patients shouldn\u2019t have immediate access to results, but receiving this news in the comfort of my home, with people I love, was 100x better than sitting in a cold, sterile clinic with the doctor who had missed my referral and then read the results verbatim from the portal. Needless to say, I got a new doctor immediately.<\/p>\n

Standing on the other side of everything, I can say the waiting game in Cancerland is brutal \u2014 but dealing with other people\u2019s emotions about my diagnosis was harder. I was present to a lot of fear and a lot of love. I was grateful for my meditation practice and began to notice that people were mostly reacting from their own relationship to mortality. It\u2019s funny how people act like they have time, but the truth is none of us actually know when our time is up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each leg of treatment came with its own discoveries.<\/p>\n

I met with my surgical team, who were confident they could get everything with a mastectomy, but seeing other breast cancer patients in the waiting room made everything feel very real.<\/p>\n

People love to say, \u201cAt least you get a free boob job.\u201d<\/em>
\nEven I had soothed myself with the idea of a consolation prize.<\/p>\n

But I learned quickly that augmentation and reconstruction are completely different animals.<\/p>\n

I chose a DIEP flap reconstruction \u2014 a process where my own tissue and blood vessels were used to build a new breast. It\u2019s extremely intensive, a multiple-site surgery lasting eight hours.<\/p>\n

Waking up in the cardiovascular ICU, my first words were:
\n\u201cDid they get all the cancer?\u201d<\/strong>
\nMy second:
\n\u201cI want to see it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

When they uncovered the bandages, my body looked like someone had spray-painted \u201cCancer Was Here!\u201d<\/strong> across my torso.<\/p>\n

During surgery, they also sampled lymph nodes, and they, too, had been kissed with cancer. We weren\u2019t done with surgery alone \u2014 we were just getting started.<\/p>\n

I had a walker, and it took a month and a half to stand up straight again. Recovery demanded a respect for my body I\u2019d never had before. It was incredibly humbling, and I had to develop a new sense of self-compassion.<\/p>\n

Throughout appointments, I was constantly asked, \u201cAny relatives with cancer?\u201d<\/em> And I couldn\u2019t help thinking of my kids. They now had a first-degree relative \u2014 what did that mean for them?
\nWe paid for genetic testing, and in true eldest-daughter, hyper-individualist fashion, I learned I got cancer \u201call by myself.\u201d Ta da! No gene to pass along to family members – getting those results was the best Christmas gift ever.<\/p>\n

I began weekly mistletoe IV therapy with my naturopath \u2014 a supportive treatment widely used in Europe to help the immune system, ease chemo side effects, and improve energy. With kiddos under 10, life is germy, so I took everything I could to stay strong. (I\u2019m still on the protocol, and to date, I haven\u2019t been sick in a year and a half. I can\u2019t even remember the last time I was sick!)<\/p>\n

The New Year brought 8 rounds of chemo over 4 months, with Krissy helping me cold cap to save my hair. I was prepared to lose it, but keeping the hair on my scalp was such a gift \u2014 especially since chemo took every other hair on my body. Cold capping was intense and hard work; you absolutely need a buddy system, and there were moments I was ready to give up, but she kept me going. I\u2019m so grateful.<\/p>\n

Summer brought 16 rounds of radiation and the inevitable dance with mental health. You never knew what your body was going to decide each day \u2014 you were 100% at its mercy. It was the murky intersection between the person you once were and the person you were becoming.<\/p>\n

Shamelessly, I found refuge from the monotony of Cancerland by escaping into the world of romantasy. Cancer doesn\u2019t care who you are, what life has already served you, and if you\u2019re a mom\u2026 you still have to \u201cmom.\u201d I was grateful for the cognitive offloading it provided. \u201cOnly you can decide what breaks you<\/strong>\u201d<\/em> is a quote from my favourite series, A Court of Thorns and Roses<\/em>, and it quickly became my motto.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT and I continued to develop our relationship \u2014 I loved accessing my health information immediately in the MyHealth portal and having Chat interpret everything into plain speak. I could mentally process it, prepare my questions for my care team, and go into my Dr. appointments informed instead of dissociated and overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

By fall, I moved to estrogen blockers \u2014 given my cancer profile of ER\/PR+ and HER2-<\/strong>, I take medication daily and injections every three months, and I\u2019m awaiting an oophorectomy to prevent estrogen from feeding any stray cancer cells.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t ease into menopause \u2014 I swan-dived into it.
\nNo slow ramp-up from peri.
\nNo gentle transition.
\nJust an abrupt, overnight crash from normal hormone levels to almost nothing.
\nAnd my body felt every inch of that freefall.<\/p>\n

What a lot of us don\u2019t realize is that estrogen affects:<\/p>\n