Hi my name is Tracy .  I am a 32 year old mother of 2 1 girl and 1 boy ages 9 and 6.  In August of 2001 I found a lump in my right breast.  I immediately called my doctor.  He told me to wait until I had got my period and if it was still there after give him a call.  So I went on with my normal routine and took my children on vacation to Salt Lake City .

When I returned I made an appointment to see the doctor, my lump was still there and getting bigger.  He checked it and said I should get an ultrasound done right away, and a mammogram (my first).  I ask...should I be worried?  He said "No your so young" lets just do the test and see what we get.  After those test we spoke again.  I ask should I be worried?  He said "No you are  so young", lets do a needle biopsy.  The results came back inconclusive.  Again I asked, again he said you so young.  Then he said "to cover my butt I'm going to have it removed.  So we scheduled a biopsy.  On September 17th the biopsy was done, immediately after the surgery my doctor came in, just about in tears. He said "the news is not good, its cancer and it is aggressive".  At that point they staged me at a 1.  I decided to go for the mastectomy, I wanted the cancer gone and didn't care if I had to lose a breast to do it.  The mastectomy and reconstruction surgery was done on October 3, 2001 , the news kept getting worse.  The cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, 8 out of 8 and the tumor was larger then originally thought.  My stage was moved up to 3B.

I was off to the oncologist.  Mentally I was prepared to do whatever had to be done to live, for me and my children.  My oncologist said we will hit it as hard as we can the first time around but it wasn't going to be easy and we could only hope for the best.  Lets do it!  That was my motto.  By November I started my first of 8 chemo treatments.  Then the good news came.

I was Her2n positive,  we began our fight with the insurance company to cover the medicine.  My first 4 cycles (AC) did not treat me well.  I was in and out of the hospital and lost a lot of weight.  My oncologist was the greatest, she treated me like I was her own.  It was just me and her against the world.  My last 4 chemo treatments were not bad (taxatere)  I started to gain my weight back and I got approved for Herceptin. YEAH!  We started the Herceptin during my 6th treatment.  I was so happy to have it.  But then disaster struck, I had an allergic reaction.  I wanted this medicine and my body was trying to stop me.  We called the Herceptin people and they said take her off, my doc said no way.  She knew that this would be my miracle drug and we were going to use it.  We worked closely with an allergist and now with high dosages of allergy medicine I can get my Herceptin with no reaction.   During this time I also started a 6 week cycle of radiation while continuing on the Herceptin.  I will stay on the Herceptin for 1 year.

I am happy to say as of today I am cancer free.  My doc and I are very happy, we took on the world and won.  She said out loud for the first time "you were really a sick girl" I know that but we never said it out loud, we were to focused on winning.

2003

The story continues.  After my year on Herceptin and Tamoxifin I went in to get rescanned.  It was bad news I had a reoccurrence. Cancer was showing up in my right armpit, to the left of the sternum and I had spots on my left lung.  But I'm not done fighting yet.  I continue on with the weekly treatments of herceptin.  I then did 6 cycles of gemzar and carbo.  After the 6 cycles I did another scan and the areas outside the lung had significant shrinkage.  I then had surgery to have my ovaries removed and will continue with the herceptin and now take Letrozal.  God keeps giving me the tools to fight so I just keep fighting.  Everyday we are here is another day we get to find the cure!!