Tuesday is Triple Negative Breast Cancer Awareness Day

Editor’s note: Patch editor Wendy Mitchell shares her journey of battling a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Her goal is to raise awareness of Triple Negative, and to encourage people to do self breast exams for early detection to help save lives. Click here to read more.

On Feb. 4, World Cancer Day, I found out I had breast cancer. This was a scary thing to think about, but something more and more women are faced with each day, regardless of family history. I am not alone, they caught it early, I can deal with this. But on Feb. 23 my doctor dropped a bomb on me; I actually have what is called “Triple Negative” breast cancer.

After the pathology reports from my lumpectomy came back, my doctor called to tell me I have “a rare and aggressive type of breast cancer” only one percent of women get compared to the “normal” type of breast cancer that 80 percent of women have. It’s called Triple Negative Metaplastic Carcinoma. Triple Negative is only found in 15-20 percent of women with breast cancer and Metaplastic Carcinoma is only found in 1 percent of women with breast cancer. The phone call lasted less than two minutes. I tried asking about my treatment, my prognosis, anything to reassure me that I’d be okay and the doctor didn’t answer my questions and told me I’d have to ask the oncologist the following week.

Of course I went straight to Google, which is the worst thing to do, and read phrases such as, “higher mortality,” “very aggressive,” “difficult to treat,” “resistant to ‘normal’ hormone drugs,” and the list goes on and on. I felt like I had just been handed a death sentence and my doctor left me in the dust to fend for myself.

For an entire week I scoured the internet looking for people who have this or any information and all I could find from the ’big cancer websites’ was vague descriptions-- that it was only discovered in 2000 so there has not been much testing or research done on this type.

Since writing about my diagnosis, Jennifer Griffin, a journalist from Fox News, reached out and directed me to a great website, Triple Negative Foundation. It has a lot of helpful information for women going through this and their families.

I also discovered Joan Lunden has this type of breast cancer and is at the end of her treatment and doing well. Her website has lots of videos and useful information.

Today, on Triple Negative Awareness Day, I want to share my story and if it has touched your heart, I ask that you please share it with others. Triple Negative does not have to mean a death sentence. There is treatment and there is hope. I am so lucky I found my lump when it was only as Stage I and it has not spread to my lymph nodes. But there are so many women who are not as lucky and so now I fight my battle for them.

Below are some facts from the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation:

• A diagnosis of TNBC means that the tumor in question is estrogen-receptor negative, progesterone-receptor negative and Her2-negative. In other words, triple negative breast cancer tumors do not exhibit any of the three known receptors.
• Receptor-targeting therapies have fueled tremendous recent advances in the fight against breast cancer. Unfortunately, there is no such targeted therapy for triple negative breast cancer.
• TNBC tends to be more aggressive, more likely to recur, and more difficult to treat because there is no targeted treatment.
• TNBC disproportionately strikes younger women, women of African, Latina or Caribbean descent, and those with BRCA1 mutations.
• Approximately every half hour, another woman in the US is diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

Related:

Patch Editor Shares Diagnosis of Rare ‘Triple Negative’ Breast Cancer

Photo: Triple Negative Foundation

Wendy Mitchell is a wife and mother of three children (14, 19, 25) and the editor of Newtown, Monroe, Shelton, Bethel, Brookfield, Danbury, Ridgefield, Wilton, Weston-Redding-Easton Patch sites. She lives in Bethel, Conn. with her family and one-year-old black lab rescue puppy. While on medical leave she will be sharing her journey on Patch. To contact Wendy email wendy.mitchell@patch.com.