Breast cancer survivors Tiana: Breast Cancer Is “Our” Story

December 2nd, 2016 Beth Kling

This is Tiana and her husband, she was 34 years old. She is a mother from the San Francisco Bay Area. Tiana and her family currently reside in the East Bay Area.

This is her story;

“On our 4th wedding anniversary, 09/04/14, my 34 year old husband had a stroke, so I assisted him with in-home treatments, after 6 months of being in hospital. In February 2015 he had his last brain surgery, and made a full recovery by their 5th wedding anniversary, 09/04/15”.

“Two weeks later I found a lump.”

On October 1, 2015, she was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Breast Cancer. She began her first of 6 rounds of chemotherapy on October 1, 2015. She had bronchitis, pneumonia, and a blood transfusion.

On December 17, 2015, two days before her 34th birthday, she learned that chemotherapy worked and upon physical examination the tumor shrank.

A breast MRI in February 2016 revealed no tumor. On February 24, 2016, she had a double mastectomy and BSO (removal of both Fallopian tubes and ovaries), and the pathology results from that surgery confirmed no evidence of cancer.

“Praise God I was CANCER free!!!”

However, she still had the BRCA-1 breast cancer gene; therefore, she had to finish out her treatment plan. Twenty-five treatments of radiation every weekday for 5 weeks in May 2016. She received Herceptin infusions every 3 weeks until November 2016, and had two more major reconstruction surgeries.

She overcame many difficulties; her husband’s stroke and her breast cancer. No matter what, she never gave up and kept on hoping for a brighter future for herself and her husband. Now she is able to live with her beloved husband peacefully.