Support the Post's through Breast Cancer (round2)
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I do not wish cancer on anyone!
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My name is Brea. I am 39, a mom to 2 beautiful girls ages 10 and 3. I am a wife and devoted auntie, and I beat breast cancer once already. My family has survived a lot of things over the last 6 years since I had Breast cancer the first time including a devastating house fire where we lost everything, covid, and several deaths in the family.
In Dec 2017 my husband notice a bump in my right breast and insisted I get it looked at. Within 2 months I was diagnosed and received a urgent bilateral mastectomy. We found that my particular cancer, while small, was very aggressive. I was diagnosed with HER2 Pos HR neg breast cancer in my right breast.
I was told by several doctors to be glad I had my daughter, who at 5 years old was our only child. We had been trying to have a second child for a long time and with this news, we were told to stop and be glad for what we had. This was a hard pill to swallow, and ultimately, I didn't.
After surgery, I spent the next year and a half fighting infections, complications, and overall had 14 surgeries in 12 months. The doctors were happy and said they had clear margins. They considered me cured.
This was all really hard on my Empath of a daughter. She became clingy and overly concerned with my health. Worrying about every single thing I did. I am her world and being a child on the spectrum, with Anxiety, she quickly spiraled into depression as well.
In 2020, we welcomed my daughters biggest birthday wish, ( a baby sister) into the world, on her birthday. At 7 years apart, almost to the hour, they are best friends.
These girls are my world. I am active in their schools, I advocate for their needs and I am there for them always. I also have several nieces and nephews I adore and spend lots of time with. Being a mom, working with kids, and loving all the littles in the world is what I am meant to do.
In October I went for a routine MRI to have all the data we needed for a revision to my breast reconstruction. I have been suffering from debilitating fatigue, loosing clumps of hair for unknown reasons and recently Diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Theses things pointed to a possible rupture in one of my implants.
My MRI came back not only showing a small tear in my left, but also a concerning spot next to a lymph node in my right. This was completely unexpected. A few days later I had a biopsy and found out I have a reaccurance of breast cancer.
Things start moving pretty fast when this happens. First I got in touch with my original team from round 1. I was referred to Fred hutch this time. They have been great so far in walking me through the process.
On October 31st I have a very long day of Doctor appointments at Fred Hutch in Seattle. I will be meeting my new team, going over all the results and tests, comparing these to my first time, and deciding on treatment. I am both scared and relieved we have such an amazing resource available locally.
I foresee having a long road ahead. Return cancer is automatically a stage 4. My biopsy showed cancer is not just in my duct like last time, this time it is a tumor on my chest wall that has grown into an adjacent lymph node. Thats what makes this even more scary for me.
My oldest daughter is now 10, and still feels the burdens of the world just with bigger emotions. I am devastated to have to explain all this to her, and when I found out I had cancer again, my first worry and thought was how will my girls handle this? How can In still be part of their school experiences, field trips and class activities while I am in treatment.
I myself have pretty bad anxiety and depression. I take daily meds for these to help keep the intrusive thoughts from sending me down a rabbit hole of worry and ultimately keeping me from being the mom I want to be to my girls.
I recently started a travel agency and have been going to Bellevue collage for my marketing degree. With Chemo, Radiation, and surgeries on the horizon, I am fearing I will have to step back from these things. I will still do my best, but I am told, there will be days where I may not be able to function on a level I am used too. I am told, that Chemo brain fog is very real, I am told that loosing my already thinning hair ( from silicone toxicity syndrome) is most likely going to happen.
Currently I am the one supporting our family, while my Autistic husband is unemployed. He was recently hired and should start his new job in the next month, but do to my recent diagnoses, and pending treatment, he will most likely have to take more time off than we can afford.
This is largely why I am making this fund raiser. We need help now more than ever. I wont be able to continue to work at the pace I have been, and my husband is going to have to take time to be with the girls while I fight for my life. With the cost of medical bills and the cost of living rising ever so fast, as well as my reduced capability to work and my husbands unexpected time off, our already financially unstable family is going to need all the help we can just to make it the next year.
Christmas is looming and aside from paying our monthly bills, some of the things the first moneys will go for is to ensure my girls can still have a Christmas. A few months later, they will both have birthdays and that will be hard too. I firmly believe children shouldn't have to suffer just because I have medical problems.
I will be making updates as I have them. As of today I have just a couple days until my first really big appointment at fred hutch. After that I will post updates and keep you in the loop on whats happening. Anything you can donate will be used to pay bills and help our family through this. There is no shortage of appreciation and thanks I have to share.
If you can't help,thats ok too. Please share this with friends, family, and on social media. Please keep us in your prayers, but more importantly keep my kids in your prayers and thoughts as they have to be present for all this and may not understand everything that is happening.
10/31/23 update:
A little bit of an update:
After 2 days of very long Dr appointments we have a preliminary plan of attack for breast cancer round 2.
In Oct 31st I met a whole team of people at Fred Hutch. They are all really nice and I'm happy with my team.
The plan going forward, pending the results of my PET scan yesterday are clear, I will have surgery to remove the tumor on my chest wall mid December. At the same time I will have my implants swapped for saline implants hopefully resolving the silicone toxicity syndrome I have currently and because my fibromyalgia was triggered by the silicone toxicicity syndrome, hopefully that will ease up a bit too.
Recovery from surgery will be 4 to 6 weeks. Around 6 weeks we will have a mapping appointment to map out radiation to my right breast side of my chest and most likely targeted to an auxiliary node deep in my arm pit as well. We won't know if that's needed until the results of the PET scan come back.
Radiation will be 5 weeks long 5 days a week. I may or may not need chemotherapy. It's going to depend on the PET scan results and pathology from surgery. Crossing my fingers I don't need chemo.
After radiation I will need to be on hormone therapy for many years.
Love,
Brea
P.s. please feel free to share this with anyone. If for no other reason than as a reminder to get your mammogram. After all, a routine check up is how we found it this time. Completely unexpected. No symptoms, no lumps bumps or pain.
11/6/23 Update:
I got my PET scan results. It looks like technically my breast cancer has metastasized however not beyond the lymphnodes. We already knew the cancer had spread into one node, and we had suspicions about a second one but it looks like there's one more making 3 nodes the cancer has gotten into. With this Info and the blood work we are pretty confident saying it's not gone beyond the 3 nodes.
So right now we work on scheduling surgery to remove the cancer, swap my implants to saline, and then heal so we can begin radiation.
A few other interesting things we found out with the PET scan include my shoulder is definitely messed up from my go cart accident a few years back. My lower back is messed up from the car accident 10 yrs ago and I have a narrowing of my spinal column and degenerative disc disease. And lastly, I now know why I have this little chronic cough. Apparently a small part of my lung is sticky to itself/collapsed. So that's interesting. No ryme or reason for that but it does explain the shortness of breath and the caugh.
Please remeber to share my gofund me. I have an active troll trying to make people believe I am lying and making this up. She has said I post asking for things under different names on nextdoor and I am always having something wrong. I assure you, I have not done that and have never posted anything on nextdoor until this.
In an effort to be transparent I am always willing to provide documentation for what's going on. All you need to do is ask.
Organizer
Brea Post
Organizer
Kirkland, WA