For anyone who doesn't know, my name is Shelby. I'm 32 years old and on April 3rd, 2026, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I have an absolutely amazing partner who has been by my side through all of this so far and an amazing support group so far.

Today, April 9th, 2026, I was told I was in stage 2 of a triple positive breast cancer, meaning I was positive in Estrogen, Progesterone, and HER2/NEU. This is a very aggressive type of cancer and we're going to tackle this even more aggressively.

I will be undergoing TCHP, Cryotherapy to combat Peripheral Neuropathy, and Cold-Capping to combat hair loss.

On April 10th, I will be going into surgery early in the morning to have a port inserted to make lab work and infusions easier on my body. After this, an Echocardiogram and PET scan are needed to make sure the cancer isn't anywhere else in my body and to make sure my heart is strong enough to undergo this aggressive treatment plan.

I will be going in for fusions every 3 weeks for 6 cycles, our start date is currently unknown at this time but expecting the first infusion to be within the next couple of weeks. Chemotherapy will be followed by surgery to remove the dead tissue (mastectomy) with the possibility of radiation following that. I will have to take hormone blockers after in hopes that I stay in remission should I make it to that stage (which I will).

For every infusion, our travel time alone is 3 hours to and from, with treatment days being a minimum of 4 to 5 hours at the cancer center alone. There will be times that I will have to miss work, either due to treatments leaving me feeling like poop or the treatment day being on a work day. This will apply to my partner as well as she's my primary caretaker during all of this.

With cold-capping and cryotherapy, everything is unfortunately out-of-pocket, and we aren't entirely sure if my insurance is going to be enough coverage for costs, not including the need for rent and utilities, gas and food, and the off-chance we would need to stay in the city overnight. I have set an undetermined amount to raise to help ease the out-of-pocket costs along with all of the upcoming medical bills that insurance will not cover.

I want to give the biggest shout out to the Watertown Breast Cancer Support Group for their extremely generous donation to us already to help get us started on this journey to remission. Any and all donations are extremely appreciated, and we couldn't be more grateful to everyone who shows up with their support. After talking with my partner with all of this, any extra money from fundraising, after covering all of our costs, will be donated back into the breast cancer foundation to help more people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

We are strong on our own, but together we can conquer! ♥

F@%& CANCER!

I love each and every one of you ♥