Breaking the News

Dear Friends and Family,
I'm writing with some sad news. I've been diagnosed with breast cancer in my right breast. We are still gathering information on the course of treatment but I will most likely have a double mastectomy sometime in early August. There is still quite a bit of information to gather: second opinions, more tests, whether I'll need chemo, etc.

As many of you know, my mom was diagnosed with DCIS (a non-invasive form of breast cancer) 10 years ago and she had a mastectomy. She is fine now. She recently tested positive for the breast cancer gene (BRCA2). This increased my chance of getting breast cancer significantly. As a result, I started aggressive early screening. (I plan on having the gene test done soon - more on this in a later post)

On June 27, I went in for a breast MRI (part of this early screening regimen). On June 29, I got a call from my doctor that there was a 2 cm mass in my right breast which was concerning. On July 2, I went in for a biopsy.

Today we met with the surgeon and confirmed the cancer diagnosis and the course of treatment as it stands right now. We then met with the plastic surgeon to discuss reconstructive surgery (I still plan on wearing a bikini!). Both surgeries will happen on the same day.

Once the surgery is over, we will have more information about whether chemotherapy is necessary. The recovery time from the surgery alone is estimated at 6 weeks.

This is all we know at this point. We plan to use this blog as a place to post updates to share with all of you. If you call or email, please understand it will take a while for us to respond. We do appreciate knowing we are in your thoughts and that you are sending love.

The good news is, we leave for Hawaii on Saturday, returning Monday 7/20, for a much needed vacation and time to process all of this information.

So how am I doing?
I am still in shock. At the moment I'm tackling this like another project at work. But I had a really productive sob session in the shower today which felt great. We are obviously overwhelmed by the impact this will have on our lives and trying to wrap our heads around all that lies ahead on this journey. We are lucky to have so much support and love, this is clearly something that takes a village.

We would appreciate if you would keep this news among the adults for now, as we want to unfold this information slowly to our girls.

Jen (and Jason - we are in this together)