
Help Nicole beat inflammatory breast cancer
Hi, my name is Brandi and I'm starting this fundraiser for my little sister, Nicole Eastman. On June 24th, 2021 Nicole was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at the age of 27. This came as a huge shock to all of us. Inflammatory breast cancer is very rare and very aggressive, it accounts for only 1 to 5% of all breast cancers. Given her young age and the fact that she was breastfeeding her 8 month old son, no one expected or ever dreamed this could happen. Nicole has two young kids, Elaina (2 years) and Nolan (almost 9 months) with her husband Trevor Eastman. Nicole had her PET scan on 6/28 which showed that she had a lesion on her left breast (the same breast that the inflammatory cancer is in). A biopsy of the lesion was done and unfortunately we found out that she also has ductal carcinoma in situ. This means Nicole has two forms of breast cancer. Nicole also found out that she is ER/PR negative which means her cancer is more aggressive (on top of already being a very aggressive type of cancer on its own). Her IBC is stage three, it has left her breast and spread to the lymph nodes but has not spread any further. She met with her oncologist and surgeon in Boston at Dana Farber on 7/1. She is hopefully getting her port in this coming week and will start chemo soon after (which will be followed by a mastectomy and radiation). As of right now Nicole plans to get treatments done at Dana Farber which is over 3 hours away. Nicole was planning to go back to work in October but can no longer do that. Trevor works as much as he can but we know that he may need to take time to help her. She has a long and hard road ahead of her but her family and friends are with her 100%. We don't want Nicole and Trevor to have to worry about anything financially, she needs to focus on getting through treatments and staying as healthy as she can for her kids. I set the goal to an estimate of what she will need for a year as this will be a long fight. I apologize for the length of this and I'm sure I still forgot something! I will update as we know more.
Thank you so very much!