My AMAZING, funny, supportive friend and coworker Rachel just started her battle with CANCER. Rachel has been a nurse since 2018, so she is used to being the one that helps others, but now it’s our turn to help her!

Rachel’s story from her own words!

I’m Rachel and I’ll be turning 37 at the end of April this year and I have 3 kids (I made 2 and have a bonus baby): Izabella 15, Orion 15, and Surrey 12. I’m a wife to the most patient man alive, Matty (Matthew), and we live a pretty normal life, I think.

About 6 weeks ago, I was taking a bath and was washing my top-end lady bits and felt a very hard and rather large lump in my left breast that I’m positive wasn’t there even just 6 months before….but I really hadn’t ever truly paid attention. I know a lot of people tend to jump to the worst-case scenario thoughts in a moment like that…butttt since I’m also a registered nurse by day…I think I really honestly knew immediately what it was. I went to my primary care Dr. the next day and off for an ultrasound I went! The same week I had the ultrasound, I had a biopsy done.

Then the results came in 2/24/25 with a single word nobody ever wants to hear…especially when it’s about you and your own health….cancer.

Since then, it feels like 10 years have gone by really. I’ve aged 20 years probably by worrying alone. Death is a possibility just from the type of cancer it is…specifically, I have triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer. It’s also….100% genetic as well.

Most of us walk around life thinking if we live a healthy lifestyle, eat right, exercise, don’t smoke or stand next to a microwave….that this won’t happen. I know I thought that anyway. Believed it to be true. Turns out….all I had to do to develop cancer was to be born. Gotta love genetics, huh? Never thought about dying before, especially me being 36 years old, and why would I? I have miles and miles of time ahead of me before I should even worry about that, right?

I’ve always been a go big or go home type of girl in every way and this cancer certainly is just that. BIG. The tumor itself is 9mm wide (think golf ball). How I missed that for so long, I cannot say really, but I did.

So for the next 6 months-ish, I’ll be doing chemotherapy at least once a week…every week to try and kill this tumor. Kill it dead, I say! And if that is successful, I will have to have a bilateral mastectomy sometime in September. My immunotherapy treatments are to continue weekly through February 2026.

Not exactly the weight loss journey I was hoping for. All a girl asked for was Ozempic! There are so many things I want to say about my and my family’s lives that have been flipped upside down and turned inside out since my diagnosis was made…so many things.

But the most important thing to me now is to beat this cancer and live! I want to see my kids finish growing up, see them graduate, get married, and have their own kids if they so choose….I want to be here to see Matty become all the way bald compared to his clinging to the remnants of hair he still has. I want to be here for it all!

I would even go as far as to say that I feel a lot of shame for not appreciating my life as I should’ve until death started staring me in the face. I’ve always been a hard worker. Ever since I was 14, I have worked and worked and worked to take care of myself and mine. My responsibilities always came first and that’s where I have to turn to others for help now.

I won’t be able to work during this cancer treatment and chemotherapy. I think all of us already have an idea of how unwell I will become in the thick of treatment. This is terrifying for me…not knowing how to pay to live (being alive is expensive for real)…let alone the medical bills which are estimated to be close to $5 million to save my life. I said what I said. $5 million….to save my life. I didn’t know that life had a price tag on it, but apparently it does. It makes me feel terrible to even be in this situation, but moreover, I feel bad for needing help. But when in Rome…..?

If anyone is able to help me and my beautiful little family in any way at all…I would be so endlessly grateful. I’m also hoping that by sharing my story…it will inspire others to GO GET CHECKED and do self-checks OFTEN. Cancer doesn’t care who you are or what you do. It just doesn’t. Y'all take care of yourselves. Think of me and my story….and take care…seriously. #breastcancer #rachelstory #cancer #nurse #medicalbillssuck