Hi! My name is Michele.

I have breast cancer, again.

I am a private person by nature and people tend to look at you differently when you tell them you have cancer, so opening up to write this GoFundMe has been difficult.

Back story....In 2020 my father passed away after battling his second breast cancer. I, along with my mom, helped take care of him and watched him continue to deteriorate even though he was given the “standard of care” by the medical community. 

He had BRCA2 mutation which he gave to me along with my four siblings. If you are in the medical field and reading this you understand how rare it is for a male to have breast cancer, let alone transfer BRCA2 to all children. For my family reading this....yes we need to be a case study.

Less than two years after watching him pass away I found a lump in my left breast and was given my first breast cancer diagnosis. My cancer is triple negative breast cancer (TNB) which basically means that the cancer cells do not have any hormone receptors for estrogen, HERS2 or progesterone. Having TNB severely limited the type of treatment that was recommened to me at the time.

Que extreme chemotherapy drugs (including the RED Devil) for several months and a double masectomy surgery afterwards. Let me tell you how fun it was being bald and wearing wigs while working full time:( During this time I see a daughter get married (she also inherited the BRCA2 mutation), and have my first grandchildren, another daughter get engaged, and another daughter graduated college. Though cancer treatment sucks, I am blessed with amazing family and people around me. In fact, I met my future husband just prior to my first diagnosis and he is a true gift from God.

Life continues for me... then I find another lump. Surgery to remove, but diagnosis is the same, cancer is the same. Margins were not clear.

I am feeling utterly devistated. A second occurance? I already took the hardest chemo drugs in an attempt to kill my first tumor and that was only 80% effective. I am now limited in what treatments my body can handle that will be effective and what insurance will even cover. The tumor grows faster this time and the cancer dna has mutated to be resistant to traditional types of treatment. However the cancer hasn’t spread to other parts of my body nor my lymph nodes.  This is good news!  

Unfortunately, my insurance declined the chemo my traditional doctor recommended.  

Which leads me to travel out of state to receive treatments from professionals at a facility that specialize in my type of cancer cells and my specific situation.  None of what I’m doing now is covered by insurance though, because it doesn’t fit the standard medical care protocol. 

Any help you would be willing to provide would make a huge difference in my outcome and provide research which can impact of many of my family, including my daughter and possibly my grandsons, who also have inherited this BRCA2 mutation but do not yet have cancer not to mention the thousands of women with a Triple Negative Breast Cancer diagnosis. Thank you for reading all the way through and helping to support my travel expenses and medical interventions which will also support future research of BRCA2 and TNB.

P.S. I added a photo of my youngest grandson because his smile is way better than mine!

Love to you all and may God bless you!