Things are looking up! It’s this mindset that she used to pull herself back up after the shock of her diagnosis caused weeks of tears. She remembers feeling a lump in her breast while showering. Noting the difference, but still unconcerned, she later asked her husband if he could feel it. Believing it was simply a swollen lymph node, since Stephanie was so young and healthy with no family history of breast cancer, they went to the doctor for a sonogram, followed by a biopsy after the sonogram wasn’t definitive. This was the crack in the door that allowed negative thoughts to enter. “I thought, gosh, this is kind of scary. This is way more than I thought was going to happen,” she admitted. “I thought they would give me some medicine to make it go away and that would be it. Then I got a call from the nurse saying the results from the biopsy were in, and they wanted to see me in the office. I could just tell by the tone of her voice that something wasn’t right. I asked her if it was bad, and she said ‘Well, it’s not good.’ And at that point I just started sobbing. I had to hand the phone to my husband. We grabbed my daughter, who was two, and we went straight to the doctor. The whole ride there, my husband held my hand while I cried.” At her general practitioner’s office, they were able to determine that Stephanie had cancer, but they needed to refer her to an oncologist to determine the exact type, stage and treatment. Through more tears, she chose a treatment path with the oncologist that included a double mastectomy and more than a dozen rounds of chemotherapy. She still didn’t want to tell others about her diagnosis, and she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word, “cancer”. “My mom was the only person I was able to tell, ‘I have cancer’, Stephanie shared. “I couldn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t want to tell anyone else.”
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Photo taken at Neiman Marcus Downtown Dallas
Within a month of her January 2022 diagnosis, Stephanie had surgery before her genetic test ultimately revealed she had a genetic link to breast cancer, even though no women in her family had ever been diagnosed. While immediately concerned for her own daughter, Stephanie began looking for any positives: “I realized, it’s good that we know now, so she can start getting checked earlier.”
A Patient and Student
While all of this had been happening in Stephanie’s life, she was in the midst of pursuing her degree in Social Work at the University of Texas, Arlington. On track for a December 2022 completion, she didn’t want anything to deter her from that goal. Not cancer. Not treatment. Not if she could help it. Without wanting to draw attention to herself, she learned how to “batch” her schoolwork around surgery and chemo regimens and the brutal after-effects of each. She wore a wig and ball cap to classes, and remarkably, she challenged her organizational skills and planned around downtime, where she knew she was going to need extra rest and recovery. As soon as she could, she would make up for lost time with a continued focus to stay in line with her graduation date goal. “It was bad,” revealed Stephanie. “I would have chemo on Fridays and be there for six hours. I’d get home and fall asleep. I was so sick, I couldn’t feed myself. My whole weekend was sleep, and then I’d go to school on Mondays. Sometimes I’d still be physically hurting, but I’d still go, because I was so focused on graduating in December.” Although it was extremely challenging, Stephanie felt it was worth the push not only to remain on schedule, but also to www.brightermagazine.org
