I was naïve.

I've heard the term "cancer" from an early age. And while I didn't necessarily understand what it meant, I did understand that it meant that someone who was fighting the disease was sick and had to undergo treatment. The first time it touched my life, I was about 15. My paternal grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember being incredibly frustrated because my family didn't tell me until after my birthday that year. My grandma didn't want me to be too worried about her - she wanted me to focus on celebrating my birthday. But I had been getting closer to my grandma that summer, so I was incredibly mad that my family kept something so important from me, even though I know they were trying to protect me. Over the next few months, I slowly watched my grandma's health deteriorate. One day, my mom came home early from work and told my brother and I to pack a bag of clothes. I kept asking why, and she said because we needed to go see my grandma - she was admitted to the hospital. I was in denial and kept refusing. My dad was flying in from Virginia a few days later and we were supposed to go visit her that weekend, she was supposed to be fine. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. We drove to Sacramento and met my uncles at the hospital, while my dad was frantically trying to get an earlier flight back to California. It was so hard to see my once lively, vivacious, spirited grandmother laying on a hospital bed, practically lifeless. The next day, my dad finally made it to California, and a few hours later when we were all in the room talking, we noticed that my grandma had stopped breathing. The doctor pronounced her dead a few minutes later.  I remember sitting in the hallway crying, and a nurse came up to me, and started talking about how death is a part of life. I just remember being angry with her for interrupting my grief, but I know she was just trying to help.

So, I've always known that cancer meant sickness and that the treatment usually meant chemotherapy, but I never really knew how many different varying aspects there were to a diagnosis until I was diagnosed myself. When you tell people that you have cancer, they're usually most concerned about what stage it is. But, as I've learned, that's not the only aspect to a diagnosis. Especially with breast cancer. Here is my full diagnosis:

Tumor was 1.3cm, Invasive Ductal Carcinoma (IDC), Stage 1, Grade 3, ER/PR/HER2 neu+, with no lymph node involvement.

My tumor was small enough that a lumpectomy was okay to pursue. Stage 1 means that there was no lymph node involvement - my cancer hadn't spread outside of the original tumor, or spread to other parts of my body. IDC (the most common type of breast cancer) means that the cancer originated in the milk ducts but spread to surrounding breast tissue. Grade 3 means that the cancer cells were rapidly dividing, so my tumor was growing rapidly, which explains why I didn't feel the tumor one week, and the next it was there. ER/PR/HER2 neu+ means that my tumor over expressed estrogen and progesterone hormones, as well as a protein called HER2 neu. 

My treatment is as follows:

Ultrasound, Biopsy of tumor, Mammogram (both sides), Biopsy of lymph node, Lumpectomy and Axillary Lymph Node dissection, Port-a-cath placement, 6 rounds of TCHP chemotherapy - one infusion every 3 weeks (Taxotere, Carboplatin, Herceptin, Perjeta), followed by Herceptin once every 3 weeks for a year, Radiation (amount to be determined), and 10 year on a hormone blocking pill called Tamoxifen.

So, "breast cancer" isn't just breast cancer. And the treatment plan is different for everyone. Chemotherapy isn't just chemotherapy - there are SO MANY different types of drugs to treat not only different types of cancer, but even different types of the SAME cancer, based on diagnosis. I had no idea. I also didn't really know what chemotherapy was, or what it meant, until my mom and I met with my oncologist to go over my treatment plan and how the chemo would affect me. All I really knew was that cancer + chemo = I would lose my hair. And that made me cry more than anything. I made a lot of phone calls and sent a lot of emails to my doctor's office asking questions, and did a lot of research on my own to try to really understand what my diagnosis meant. My friend Alicia sent me an email with a list of things she thought I should do, and the best advice she gave was "be your own advocate". So, I called whenever I had a question, I wrote down questions when they came up, and I constantly called the doctor's office to set up a consultation with a surgeon and then get a surgery date. I wanted the thing that was trying to kill me OUT, ASAP. That was my top priority. For two weeks, I was constantly on the phone, on the internet, and I slowly started to tell the people in my life that were most important to me my news. It took a lot out of me, and I could only tell about one or two people a day. 

I found out about my cancer on Monday, December 1. Two weeks later, on Monday, December 15, I was in surgery for my lumpectomy and lymph node dissection. 

A few friends of mine are nurses, and when I told them my full diagnosis, they assured me that even though my situation is shitty, my prognosis is pretty good. However, I remember asking my doctor the survival rate, and he didn't give a straight answer. I don't remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, "You're going to live a long time." I remember feeling defeated and terrified. I don't know if my treatment plan will work, and I will now be hyper-aware of any changes in my breasts and be paranoid for a while. Eventually, I hope, it will taper off, and one day down the road, I won't think about cancer every day of my life, but for now - it's constantly at the forefront of my mind.

When my treatment is over, I'd like to become an advocate for young women dealing with cancer. I feel like people need to be more aware that cancer can touch someone's life, even at a young age. I want to help people come to terms with their diagnosis, fight for their right to health care, to a second opinion, to get answers, to find support. Cancer can touch someone's life at any age, but young women dealing with cancer in their 20's brings to light a lot of other psychological and emotional problems that someone diagnosed later in life don't necessarily deal with. I'm much more aware of my mortality and the fact that I might not live an incredibly long life because of my cancer, I'm scared about finding a partner that will be brave enough to love me despite my cancer, I'm struggling with body image issues with my scars and the fact that my left breast is no longer shaped the same as it used to be and now also sits higher up than my right breast, dealing with trying to find a career (or in my case, keep my job) while undergoing treatment... There are unique issues that arise for every age group that deals with a cancer diagnosis, and these are just some of the ones that have arisen for me, and seem to be an issue with other women I've talked to dealing with a cancer diagnosis in their 20s-30s.

I've learned a lot through this experience. Stuff that I really wish I'd never had to learn about, but life rarely goes as planned. At least now that I have a better understanding of cancer, I can educate other people, and be much more empathetic to other people that are diagnosed or undergoing treatment.