So during the 2 week egg retrieval process I was also chipping away at the other things on my checklist… MRIs, bone scan, CTs, etc. I had an appointment almost every day for 2 weeks.

BUT I gotta tell you about a breast MRI… for those of you who have had one you probably know what I’m about to say. You get an IV for the contrast they inject during the scan, have you strip down to just a hospital gown and your undies, oh and they let you keep your socks on! The gown opens up in the front and as you enter the scan room they have you lay face down, gown open, and place your boobs in these little slots. Oh and by the way, the table you lay on is COLD. So here you are laying face down, boobs in slots just hanging to the floor with your arms above your head. If you can picture that! Then when you think it can’t get much worse, they slide you back into the MRI which is very small and claustrophobic. “This will only take about 45 minutes”. Well, better get comfortable. After about 25 minutes my hands went numb being above my head and I could hardly feel the squeeze ball they give you to contact them in case you panic. Anyways, made it through that. Just had to give you all that image in your head. NEXT.

For those of you who have been through IVF or the egg retrieval process, I now have an entirely new respect for you. The egg retrieval process is a hurry up and wait kind of game. Hurry up and get your medications, blood work, and ultrasound. Watch this video link on how to inject medications into your belly at home AND… begin tomorrow! You start injecting medication to encourage the ovaries to produce more eggs. You inject medications daily for about 8-12 days increasing the amount of medication and injections as you get closer to the egg retrieval procedure. During this process you go in for blood work and ultrasounds every couple days to make sure you are responding to treatment. During a typical cycle, women only produce one egg, so stimulating multiple eggs is… well uncomfortable to say the least. Bloated, irritable… and on top of all of that, they keep you on activity restrictions due to being at high risk for ovarian torsion (your ovaries can flip and cut off blood flow) which is a high risk of losing an ovary all together. So here I am, injecting medications into my belly every day, bloated, and not able to workout or be active (my worst nightmare). Anyways… when the follicles are mature, you administer a trigger shot and 36 hours later you are ready for your egg retrieval procedure. Everything is very precise on timing of medication. So in December of 2022 I had 14 eggs retrieved and 10 of those eggs were mature and sent off to be frozen for another day. Great success! The actual procedure was not painful, however I was given fentanyl during the procedure to assist with pain management and when I woke up, I was feeling good. (See photo). My husband said when the doctor came in to see me after the procedure all I said was “I feel fucking great”. So egg retrieval… check! What’s next…

As I chipped away at my checklist, scan after scan, awaiting results… appointment after appointment, gathering information. The one little thing on that checklist that ended up being a bigger deal than I would have thought: Egg retrieval. Oh ya, if you want the chance to have kids when you are done with treatment due to the effects of chemotherapy on your fertility, you should get your eggs retrieved, and do it before you begin chemotherapy. I had a phone call appointment on a Friday afternoon with a doctor at Seattle Reproductive Medicine who laid out all of my options. The options were 1) go forward with the egg retrieval and freeze your eggs 2) turn the eggs into embryos and freeze embryos 3) opt out all together and hope that you are still fertile after treatment and wish for the best. Oh and by the way… this is not covered by your insurance and it will cost you nearly 8-10,000 dollars. You have to decide by Monday because we need to start chemotherapy as soon as possible. Talk about a rushed decision.

OKAY. Decision made I guess! We decided to do the egg retrieval, just freeze eggs at this time and decide later if we wanted to turn them into embryos. (Cheaper now, more expensive later).

Now for the actual egg retrieval process… a whirlwind to say the least. Starting right away of course since we were on such a time crunch to start treatment. I had to set up blood work, ultra sound, obtain all of the medications and syringes for injecting the medication. I also had the opportunity to apply for grants and financial assistance. We did get approved for the medications to be covered by a financial assistance program called Livestrong which helps cover fertility assist for cancer patients. The medications alone were up to $4,000. I also received $700 towards the egg retrieval process from a grant called TeamMaggie who also assists cancer patients going through this process. Even though it still cost over $7,000 I am grateful for the assistance and support from nonprofit organizations such as these in a time where you don’t expect to be throwing thousands of dollars into a treatment after just a few weeks of being diagnosed with cancer. Anyways… egg retrieval, here we go.

Remember that checklist I was pumped about? These were all the things I needed to do before starting chemotherapy:

1. Genetic testing

2. Breast MRI

3. Brain MRI

4. Bone Scan

5. Abdominal CT

6. Lymph node biopsy

7. Echocardiogram

8. Medical Oncologist appointment (different than surgical oncology of course)

9. Apply for FMLA

10. Set up plastic surgery consult for reconstructive options after surgery

11. Seattle Reproductive Medicine appointment for possible egg retrieval

12. Get a port

13. Obtain 10,000 medications for the side effects of chemotherapy

READY. SET. GO.

More to come on my diet and exercise regimen… back to the story on my first appointment with Dr. Moline and the game plan that was about to be laid out before me. Let me just say, Dr. Moline is the most straightforward and to the point person I have ever met, however she is damn good at her job. She actually called me a few nights before my appointment with her to describe a few things for me to prepare me for what was to come. Now, the actual appointment was… overwhelming to say the least. 2 hours of explanation on what breast cancer I have, what does that mean, and what are we going to do about it. There were diagrams drawn out, hand written instructions and a checklist made. The checklist was my favorite part. I am a total checklist kind of person. My husband and I left that appointment with our jaws dropped. However, we had all the information now. At least that’s what we thought. She laid out 3 options… 1) Mastectomy then chemotherapy 2) lumpectomy then chemotherapy 3) Chemotherapy then surgery. #3 was recommended and I will tell you why. If you complete chemotherapy before you cut out the tumor you are able to see if the treatment itself is actually working (shrinking the tumor). If you remove the tumor first, you are unable to see if the chemotherapy is working on anything. It also allows the chemotherapy to shrink the tumor for easier removal of the mass during surgery. So #3 it is. Alright, NOW let’s fucking do this.

So first step, at least what I was told, was get set up with a surgical oncologist. Multiple people I spoke with recommended Dr. Moline, who specializes in breast cancer. Monday comes around and I start making some phone calls, trying to get set up with an appointment. Call after call, nothing. Day after day, nothing. Looking back, I think this was the most frustrating part of it ALL. You have a very fast spreading cancer and let’s wait to get you scheduled or even speak with anyone! An entire week went by without scheduling a damn thing. The following Monday is when things started to come together. I finally got scheduled with Dr. Moline, a week and a half after my phone call that labeled me a “cancer patient”. But during that week of waiting, I’ll tell you what I did. Absolutely everything in my power to learn everything there was to possibly know about breast cancer and what I could do on my end to slow it down or stop it from spreading. I listened to podcast after podcast, read articles and books, watched videos and listened to interviews. Everything I could think of. What was I looking for? What I can do in the meantime. I completely changed my diet, stopped drinking alcohol, continued to exercise and intermittent fast. After all the research I did, I landed on the keto diet. Eliminating sugar completely, focusing on reducing carbs and primarily eating fat and protein. So of course, the extremist that I am, I went hard. And I went hard for the entire 8 months I went through treatment and surgery. No sugar. No beer. No fun. But I will tell you what… IT WORKED.

Telling the people you love the most that you have cancer is hard, but I think the hardest part was not knowing the plan. I have breast cancer. What kind? What does that mean? Well what happens now? I didn’t have the answers to any of these questions. I went to dinner that night to celebrate my mom’s birthday with my mom, mother in law and sister in law. My sister in law had texted me earlier in day so she already knew the news. But she was there for me in support of telling my mom. Telling my mom was heart breaking. My mom had battled her own cancer (Hodgkins lymphoma) back in 2009. She knew what it was like to go through treatment, and to hear that her youngest daughter was about to go through something similar, well I had to get enough courage to tell her. I did, and ruined the entire birthday dinner, but it was out there now. Real. But again, now what? Spent the rest of the weekend spreading the news and swallowing the truth. I am grateful enough to have a friend who used to work for Cancer Care Northwest and had a lot of information I was eager to get started on learning. I met up with her and got the low-down on who, what, when, where and why so I could go into Monday with a game plan. Now… the only thing I didn’t do this weekend was cry. I never felt sadness for myself or anyone around me. I just felt like this was a new chapter in my life that I just had to tackle, maybe with a little help and a different way of doing things, but I was ready. Let’s fucking do this.

I received the phone call with my diagnosis on Friday, November 4th 2022 at 10:00 am. I remember the exact moment. I was driving in Cusick, WA (the middle of nowhere) for work and got just enough phone service to receive a call, THE CALL, that would change my world. I pulled over and answered the phone. “Has anyone called you about your biopsy results? They have been posted on your mychart for 3 days.” (Gotta love the healthcare system) “I’m so sorry, your results came back CANCEROUS. I will send out an oncology referral and they will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.”

Diagnosed on a Friday, there was nothing to do except wait over the weekend to start making calls the following Monday. You are diagnosed with a HIGH grade, INVASIVE, and FAST spreading cancer and asked to wait … torture. So what do you do next? Tell the people you love? No, not yet. I finished my day of work. About 5 more hours of driving, seeing patients and documenting my day. The last few hours I tried to absorb as being as normal as possible before telling anyone. If I didn’t tell anyone, it wasn’t real, yet. The last few hours of just being an occupational therapist. Now that was not my only role or title. I was now a cancer patient. I saw the rest of my patients and stopped by my husband’s work on the way home that afternoon. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, it became reality. This is now REAL.

To tell my story, I must start at the beginning. They always tell you to do self exams on your breasts starting around age 30, right? Well I’m NOT even 30! But I will admit I was sore from working out and was pressing on my pec muscle and I felt a lump. Sitting right on top of my muscle. I found this lump in October of 2022. Like anyone who is 28 years old, probably thought it was nothing. BUT I thought I would be safe and schedule a breast exam. 2 weeks later I went in for a breast exam and again, my OBGYN thought it was nothing! Maybe a cyst? Maybe a lymphoma? However, she ordered an ultrasound just in case. Ultrasound came back a little abnormal, so they scheduled me for a biopsy. At this point, I figured…. This is all routine. I’m sure everything is fine! Well ultrasound, biopsy and one phone call later I was diagnosed with a highly invasive, high grade, triple negative ductal carcinoma. WHAT THE F*** IS THAT

My name is Amanda Breeden, I am an occupational therapist and a fitness/health enthusiast. I love working out, bettering myself and helping others better themselves! As most people who start a blog, I have a story to share to hopefully inspire and help others who may be going through something similar. I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year at age 28. I went through an egg retrieval, chemotherapy and 2 surgeries in less than a year. I have listened to my doctors and nurses, but also did a fair share of my own research and I am starting this blog to hopefully shed some light on what I did and how it may help you or someone you know. Thanks for listening!