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On my 30th birthday, we welcomed a new exciting decade, anticipating my burgeoning career, starting a family, and dreaming of the home we would one day purchase..six months later, I was diagnosed with stage 2B breast cancer.

My husband, my family, and I were shocked by the diagnosis as there is no family history of cancer, but we hit the ground running.  After consulting a fertility specialist, and determining the risk of holding off treatment to harvest and freeze embryos was too great, I underwent treatment at the Disney Family Cancer Center in Los Angeles.  At the time, I worked in development for Walt Disney Motion Pictures after earning my MFA at USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program in 2009.  My office was located across the street from my cancer center.  After a year of treatment: chemotherapy, radiation, and mastectomy surgery, we celebrated my cancer-free status and looked forward to being able to getting back to “normal” and starting our family after one more year of hormone therapy.

In February 2013, while in New Jersey visiting my family, intense headaches led to an MRI showing a brain tumor and I was rushed to NYU Langone for brain surgery, followed by partial brain radiation.  It was successful, but, now with Stage 4 cancer, my life would never be the same.  Everything that I thought was ahead of me was at risk.  It was no longer possible to have a child the traditional way and my stressful career no longer seemed healthy.  Confused, I left the career I’d spent years building and moved back to New Jersey to be closer to my family and started working for my family’s real estate business.

My hopes of egg harvesting were once again dashed after a brain MRI discovered a small recurrence.  I had gamma knife surgery and thankfully, have been stable for almost 2 years.  In 2012, I became very active in the breast cancer advocacy community. Last year I formed a non-profit, to fund a documentary about our journey to start our family through egg donation and surrogacy to help others dealing with cancer and infertility.  With the help of an egg donor we created two embryos, the first miscarried and we are anxiously awaiting the transfer of the second.

Now four years from initial diagnosis, at the age of 34, I’ve returned to Los Angeles where I reside with my husband, and our two mutts, Zelda and Link.  We recently fulfilled our dream of home ownership and the pups have a small yard.  Lifestyle and nutrition changes have been a big part of my healing process.  One day I hope to bring home a child and finish our documentary.  In spite of everything I have experienced over the past four years since initial diagnosis, I believe happiness comes from consciously creating our lives.

My name is Rebecca Adam. I’m 39. I’m a stay at home mom of a special needs 4 year old son, a wife to the love of my life and also battling DeNovo Stage IV metastatic breast cancer.

My rollercoaster stared in March 2013.  After weaning my 15-month old, I started noticing breast changes (one bigger than the other, dimpling, nipple inversion and pain in my chest that went through my back.) I was also extremely exhausted. I thought these were all “typical new Mom, lactating or drying up” symptoms. I went in for my annual doctor appointment that ended with “this is suspicious” see you Monday for more “testing” result.
After a series of several tests, biopsies, scans, etc., I was diagnosed Stage IVb breast cancer with metastases all over my liver and lung on June 18, 2013. At this time I was told I had an “undetermined life expectancy”. This was all just the day before my sons 18 month “well baby check” that had ended up with an “autistic” diagnosis of his own. We actually started treatment within weeks of each other. Him in home services and me chemotherapy.

I took 16 rounds of infused chemotherapy and was put into menopause. I was to have a radical double mastectomy followed with radiation. However I was told just before my son’s 2nd birthday and Christmas that they wanted to hold off on the operation and radiation. I was elated! On March 28, 2014 I was put into a “radical remission” and currently all scans show stable metastatic disease on my liver. I look for, and show inspiration, hope, love and grace whenever I can.

I was laying in the pull-out bed of the local children’s hospital and my mind was spinning. My mother was sitting in a rocking chair in front of me, calming my 7-week-old son and humming to him. My husband lay beside me trying to get some sleep. We had been told earlier that our newborn was going in for surgery the next morning to correct a digestive issue that had appeared on a sonogram. It was just another bump in the road. Sam, my son, was born with complications. I had expected the perfect introduction to motherhood, one where I could post pics and say “Mom and baby are resting and wonderful.” I didn’t get that. Upon our return to our home, things were never quite smooth. I was bone tired. If someone came to visit, I begged for time to lay down while they watched my beautiful son. I didn’t want to eat. I had gained fifty pounds while pregnant! Now, a month later, I was down 20 pounds. I couldn’t breastfeed, it just wasn’t working. My body was sore, but I chalked that up to a normal childbirth effects.

A few weeks after Sam’s surgery, I started to experience pain in my upper abdomen. It felt sharp at times. I was returning to work as a middle school teacher and didn’t know how I was going to manage. I went to my doctor with the pain and we did tests, and all that was found were slightly elevated liver enzymes. My doctor referred me to a GI doctor and sent me for gallbladder testing. Everything came back normal, yet the liver enzymes continued to climb. I returned to the classroom for three days, and the pain increased.  After a day of shopping, I found that I couldn’t breathe without sharp pain. My doctor instructed me to go back to the ER. As they gave me a shot of morphine, I remember looking at an intern and asking her, “could this be cancer?” And she shuttered and said, “Don’t go there.”

For five days I was separated from my newborn. I laid in that stark white room not knowing what the hell was going on. I was in pain, which was getting worse. I was finally told on the third day that my CT scan showed a liver that looked like it had been sprayed with bullets. I was ordered to undergo a colonoscopy, endoscopy and eventual liver biopsy. The scopes both came back clear, much to my relief. But the liver biopsy was proving difficult to get done. After the liver biopsy was performed on a Friday, we returned home for a weekend of waiting. I awoke that Monday morning to a phone call from my family doctor, who was just happening to see Sam for his four-month check-up that day. Her office told me she had preliminary biopsy results and would give them to me at his appointment. For some reason, I didn’t think anything bad was going to come of it. I got Sammy ready for his appointment and my mom agreed to come with us as my husband was working. The whole drive there I remember thinking, this is the last time I am going to look at these trees the same way, at life in this light.  At the office, we sat, and my doctor just came out with it. “We got some results, and they aren’t good. You have multiple malignancies on your liver. You have cancer.” My mother immediately began to sob. I started to cry and shake. Cancer? Where did it come from?

I was scared, lost, hurt, and mad. I had stage IV breast cancer and it was in my liver. I knew this wasn’t good. I was 35 years old. I had a four-month-old who was my life. What was I going to do? I resolved myself in that moment, after the screams and the tears that I would do everything in my power to get through this and live with it. I wasn’t going to let cancer get me without a fight. The oncologist started me on chemotherapy the next week and throughout our initial appointment, he listened and answered questions but never gave me any sort of prognosis. He was in the fight with me. He let me cry and held my hand. That was over two years ago now. Since that day I have been on 4 different chemotherapy drugs, 2 different hormone therapies, done 10 rounds of radiation and had countless scans and blood draws. But I am still here and I have been very much a part of Sam’s life. I have fatigue, I have pain, and there are days I spend in bed. But I have kept my promise to myself and to him that I will keep on, keepin’ on. The joy of being able to hold him each and every day is what keeps me going, especially on those hard days. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be living with cancer, but I am. I am living.

September 11, 2008 I found THE lump under my left armpit. Terrified, and with a gut feeling that it wasn’t good, I called my OB-GYN. She immediately got me an appointment for a mammogram and breast ultrasound. Nothing showed up on either, except four large lymph nodes. After a lymph node biopsy, it was confirmed I had breast cancer; and after my MRI, it was confirmed that I had three tumors in my left breast. I was 31, extremely healthy, with no family history of breast cancer, married for three years – we had just moved to Chicago with our then almost two year old son.

I underwent A/C chemo, bilateral mastectomy, reconstruction, blood transfusions, Taxol, radiation to my chest wall, Herceptin and Tamoxifen. June of 2009 we moved to Austin. I completed my Herceptin there, continued Tamoxifen, and had clear scans in April 2010.  In November of 2010, I ran my first half  marathon.  In August of 2011, I ran my second half marathon. In August of 2011, I went off Tamoxifen for six months to try and conceive.  On September 14, 2012, he was born.  I got back on Tamoxifen six weeks after his birth and began running, taking tennis lessons, and kick-boxing classes. I felt the best I had ever felt. I was healthy, I had my two sons, and life was great.

September 7, 2014, I was working a shift in the Neonatal ICU. I didn’t feel right. The Neo and labor and delivery charge nurse checked my blood pressure and blood sugar. Both were normal. Later that afternoon, I still felt really bad. I went to the door to get out of the locked unit, and I couldn’t remember how to open the door. I knew it was a door, but couldn’t remember how to open it. When I finally got out, the L&D charge nurse saw me, ran to get a wheelchair, and brought me down to the ED. My right leg was convulsing and I was in so much pain. By the time they got me to the back (minutes later) I had a tonic-clonic seizure. The MRI revealed a 2.5-3cm tumor between the two hemispheres of my brain.

Metastatic breast cancer was confirmed after my crainiotomy on September 11, 2013. Late September, it was confirmed that I had mets to my right lung, one in my spine as well. I underwent brain radiation, a bilateral Salpingo-oopherectomy, and chemotherapy. I had to go to physical therapy to work on my proprioception and build strength back up on my right side. I continue with Herceptin, Perjeta, and Anastrozole to this day. I am currently NED (no evidence of disease). My lung, spine, and brain mets are not active. I am now dedicating a lot of my free time to advocating for metastatic breast cancer research and patient support.

My name is Kristin Todd and I am 34-years young. In July of 2013, I was 32 and 34 weeks pregnant with our first child. My husband, Brian, had pointed out a lump in my breast to me and I brought it to the attention of the OB-GYN during one of my routine pregnancy checks.

This first doctor essentially blew off my concerns, telling me I was too young for breast cancer and regardless, they wouldn’t do anything about it until after the baby was born. Wrong on BOTH counts. Being in the medical field myself (I am a nurse practitioner), I didn’t accept this answer. I brought the lump to the attention of my regular OB-GYN who shared my concern and got me in right away for an ultrasound and biopsy. My husband and I were stunned into silence when we received the news that I had invasive ductal carcinoma (ER/PR+ and HER2-). I was tested for the BRCA mutations and was negative.

From that point forward, it was a mad dash to see doctors and make decisions quickly both for myself and for our unborn child. I went ahead and at 36 weeks pregnant, I had a lumpectomy and lymph node dissection. The day after my surgery, I was readmitted to the hospital with a kidney stone. A week following my surgery, at 37 weeks, I was induced and gave birth to our beautiful, healthy baby boy, Logan Kristopher.  Three days after giving birth, I had my port placed for chemotherapy and had my first PET scan which delivered devastating news…liver and bone metastases. I was crushed and was at a loss for how to feel. I was supposed to be enjoying my first days of motherhood.

A week after my son was born, I began chemotherapy. I had 6 rounds of A/C chemotherapy which put me into NED status (no evidence of disease). Since then, I had my ovaries removed (because of my hormone positive cancer) and am now post-menopausal. I had a recurrence in my bones in the summer of 2014 and received radiation to a spot on my rib and a spot on my T-spine. I enjoyed NED status for a little while longer when I had another recurrence in my liver in the Fall of 2015.  I just finished my 4^th round of Doxil chemotherapy and will have a scan in late January to hopefully show the resolution of my liver mets. In the Fall of 2015, I also had extensive genetic testing done at UCSF which found that I have the CHEK2 gene mutation which increases the risk of breast cancer, similar to the BRCA gene mutations.

People have asked me how I coped with having a newborn and doing my first chemo treatments. I had amazing family support.  My dad is a family physician in Florida and he has been a huge help when it comes to getting the best information and care out there. Without him, I would not have the benefit of several expert opinions whenever there is a decision to be made.

My mother retired from her job in Georgia and moved out to California right away when I was diagnosed and my mother-in-law (also from Georgia) dropped everything to come help. So between the two moms and my husband, they took care of the night feedings so I could get lots of sleep. My sister, cousin, and friends also took turns flying out from the southeast to help in any way they could.

I’m slowly getting use to my “new reality” as I like to call it. Life with Stage IV breast cancer is a roller coaster. My family and I live for the good news and support each other with any bit of not-so-good news.

But overall, my son is the absolute light of my life and the best motivation for doing everything I can to stay well and healthy for him. I so believe in the power of the mind and I have so much love and support around me along with my own positive outlook that I know I can get through most anything.

This looks like cancer,” the radiologist told me as the ultrasound technician stood over me, cold gel at the end of the wand pressing on my right breast. I suddenly felt like covering up, as if I could pull a sheet over myself and make the malignant cells disappear. The technician gave me that “I’m so sorry” look, and all I could blurt out was, “What else could it be?” Cancer wasn’t supposed to happen in my life.

No one on my side of the family had ever had any type of cancer, which is probably an anomaly in itself; all of my grandparents and great-grandparents had lived into their eighties or nineties (or are still alive). People don’t die in my family so much as wear out sometime around their ninetieth birthday.I was aware of breast cancer — who isn’t these days? I’d run a couple of 5k races for the cure, but that was the extent of cancer touching my life. I’m lucky, I guess.

I didn’t know the first thing about coping with a breast cancer diagnosis at the age of thirty-two. My head was spinning. I had recently become a first-time mom, so my head was spinning from that, too. The day I was diagnosed, I’d had to call my husband to make sure we had enough breast milk in the fridge to tide our son over until I could get home; my appointment was taking longer than I expected and they wanted to send me to radiology for additional tests. Even as I sat in the waiting room, watching Dr. Oz and surrounded by pamphlets on breast cancer, I didn’t suspect what was coming.

As I drove home from the radiologist’s office that August afternoon, I felt guilty about having to tell my husband, who had lost his dad to pancreatic cancer less than two years earlier.  I worried that I’d already passed the cancer on to my son. After all, I’d been nursing him for five months out of what I now thought of as a rotten, cancer-filled breast. My doctors told me not to worry, as if that were possible.  I worried I was going to die and leave my little family, but then I thought: It’s breast cancer. People beat this all the time.  I didn’t know the first thing about it.

My husband — a scientist and professor — and I began reading everything we could. We learned that the average age of a breast cancer diagnosis is 61. We learned that, while rare, when cancer does strike young women, the survival rate is high. I figured: I’m healthy, so I’ve already got a leg up. I figured — naively — that the one percent or so who didn’t make it must have other, underlying health issues. Maybe they didn’t tolerate chemo, or were obese, or smokers. I was trying, desperately, to make sense of something frighteningly random.

I’d done yoga until I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. I’d run two marathons. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University and law school. I’d passed the bar and planned a wedding and moved across country all in the same summer. Cancer has nothing on me, I thought, as if it were a matter of will or endurance.

Because my tumor was about the size of a walnut and as aggressive as they come, my doctors ordered a slew of follow-up scans and tests those first couple of weeks. My breast surgeon was the one who called with the results. She told me as gently as she could that there were spots in my lungs, my spleen, my chest wall, and an area outside my liver called my periportal region. I wasn’t sure whether to cry or vomit. My mind was buzzing, and everything started to get dark around me as if I might lose consciousness. I wasn’t able to process any of what she was saying, so I passed the phone to my husband and asked my doctor to repeat everything to him.

I had a five-month-old son and Stage IV breast cancer.  As I write this, I am on my third course of chemo, a relatively new drug that specifically targets my cancer cells while leaving the rest of my body relatively unscathed. I get to keep my hair this time. And luckily, it appears to be working.

In the four-and-a-half years since my diagnosis, I have been bald twice, lost both my breasts and my fertility, and have had reconstruction surgery and five weeks of daily radiation. My nipples have been replaced by scars, and I don’t know if my eyebrows will ever recover the fullness they once had. I have gotten down to no evidence of disease (NED, in cancer-speak) with every chemo, but hotspots have cropped back up as soon as chemo ends. I have scans every four months to check the status of my cancer. I worry about the day my may drugs stop working.

My name is Beth Caldwell. I’m a writer, an activist, a former federal civil rights attorney, a lifelong Seattleite, a wife and mom to two fabulous children…and I have metastatic breast cancer. I found the lump in my breast in the shower on a Tuesday in March 2014, when I was 37. I saw my doctor that Thursday, I had a mammogram and biopsy the following Monday, and was diagnosed with ER/PR+, HER2- neuroendocrine breast cancer on a Wednesday. A week later, I got the results of my PET scan, which showed that my cancer had spread to my bones, making it metastatic and thus incurable. I learned then that I will die of or with my disease.

Since then, my cancer has also spread to my liver, brain and lungs. Right now, the treatment I’m on has managed to beat the cancer back so that it no longer shows up on PET scans–but that doesn’t mean I’m cured. My treatment will continue for the rest of my life, however long that is. Median survival with de novo metastatic breast cancer, like mine, is about 33 months. I’m hoping that I’ll beat that time frame, and live long enough to see my youngest, who is 4, start kindergarten in 2017, or even beyond that.

What’s it like living with metastatic breast cancer? Well, for one thing, I’m tired all the time. For those of you with kids, remember the days when they were tiny and woke you up every 2 hours all night, and then you had to try to function when you haven’t slept well in weeks or months? That’s a bit what cancer fatigue is like, only more so. I struggle to get up in the mornings, and coffee is my constant companion…and there are days where I just stay in bed, because I’m too tired to get up.

Then there’s the other side effects from treatment, which change depending on the treatment you’re on: diarrhea, constipation, nausea, hair loss, vaginal dryness, loss of libido, skin darkening, peeling skin on hands and feet, joint pain…and the knowledge that this will all continue until I die.

A diagnosis like mine is devastating, but it’s not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning. It’s a story of grief, anger, and frustration, but also of love and support. I’ve written before that finding out you have metastatic breast cancer is like being shoved off a cliff. You land at the bottom, in pain and afraid, but after a time, you pick yourself up and survey your surroundings. And what I’ve found is that here at the base of the cliff, the trees are actually quite lovely–and those trees are the people I have met: my incredible oncologist, Dr. Edmond Marzbani of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and my fellow metastatic patients.

Those metastatic patients are what drive me to advocate for better funding for metastatic research. I look at those women and men, and I think to myself, “I don’t want them to die.” But they do die–in December alone, I lost 8 friends to metastatic breast cancer, many of them leaving behind small children who will grow up without a mother because of this cruel disease.

It’s a lot like living through the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s: you watch young people, with so much life ahead of them, with such beautiful souls, just gone. It makes me want to scream out, “WHO WILL HELP US?” And I’ve realized as I’ve been advocating for our community that it has to begin with us. We have to try to save each other. We have to turn our grief and our love for each other into action, to change the landscape for metastatic breast cancer. So that no more families have to bury a loved one so young.

For me, the hardest part about this disease is watching what it does to the people who love me. I can take the horrible side effects of treatment standing on my head, but I know how my family and friends feel watching me suffer, because I feel the same watching my metastatic sisters and brothers suffer. I know what it’s like to want someone to be OK, and to be unable to help, because metastatic breast cancer doesn’t care that I want them to be OK. So, I know that my family and friends feel the same way about me–and that’s what makes me cry. The idea of the people I love, who love me, suffering along with me, is almost more than I can bear.

But I am bearing it, because metastatic breast cancer just doesn’t give you a choice. You live with it until you die of it. I get tired of people saying how brave I am, because I think they think it means that I’m fearless. But then I remember that Brave means you’re scared, but you do it anyway. And that’s what living with a terminal illness is like–fear is a constant companion, but nevertheless, you go on living your life as long as you can, as well as you can.

My name is Adrian McClenney a Metastatic (Stage 4) Breast Cancer Survivor. On May 19, 2011  I was diagnosed with stage 3 Inflammatory Breast Cancer, a rare but aggressive form of breast cancer.

My treatment regimen consisted of 16 cycles of chemotherapy treatments, A Double bilateral mastectomy and 37 treatments of radiation treatments. I have also had a full hysterectomy performed. I was misdiagnosed for months, before being properly diagnosed. Inflammatory breast cancer rarely shows up on mammograms. I am grateful for being persistent and demanding attention.  My breast went from a little red itchy spot to a very painful itchy swollen hot breast. I had a big knot underneath my arm where the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. I could barely lift my arms, carrying my purse was a big challenge. I would try and cook and found myself dropping bowls and pots. I knew something was wrong and I needed attention quickly.

am now the Author of two books Pink Lifesaver and also Pink Sunshine. I am also a Co-author of two other books. I love using my story to educate other women about the importance of breast health and advocacy.

Things are sometimes a little rough but I push through. I am grateful for a very supportive family and loving friends that really makes a difference while going through a journey as breast cancer. I am now living with metastatic breast cancer, but I vow to educate, advocate, live and love loudly. There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer but I believe in miracles. If I can leave you with anything today it would simply be alive every day, beautiful, because you are.