After Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, RivCo Rancher 'Stronger & Braver'

MURRIETA, CA — Triple-negative breast cancer. It's not a diagnosis anyone wants to hear, let alone a 36-year-old local ranch owner, Jessica Wanhoff.

She is on the other side of surgery and treatment and well into her recovery—with no reoccurrence or evidence of cancer since Aug. 2022. This week, Wanhoff shared her story to urge others to pay attention to their body and thank the oncologists at Loma Linda University Medical Center Murrieta for helping her beat the aggressive stage three breast cancer.

"I came out knowing I am a lot stronger and braver than I thought," Wanhoff said, reflecting on her journey with Lisa Aubry in a recent report for LLMC.

It was 2021 when she received the news that her unexplained pain that surpassed negative mammograms was cancer. Based on family history, Wanhoff knew she was predisposed to breast cancer, but hearing the news was devastating. "First, everything went quiet," Wanhoff said. Then came the tears. At last came the plan for fighting her cancer with groundbreaking treatments.

"Once I received the news, I cried my eyes out for a minute, and then an oncologist broke it down," Wanhoff described in a video interview. "You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and you just keep going."

Dr. Sharon Lum, the Loma Linda University Health Department of Surgery chair, discussed the diagnosis.

"In triple-negative breast cancer, the cancer cells don't have receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and a protein called HER2. While the triple-negative makes the cancer unresponsive to specific therapies, it also opens the door to different treatment approaches," Lum said.

During treatment, simple things became hard at Wanhoff's Menifee ranch, where she is responsible for three horses, three cats, and two dogs." Just watering horses and feeding the farm animals became a struggle," she said. "You will have good days, you will have bad days, you will have moments of sheer terror, but you have to keep going."

Wanhoff received a type of antibody therapy and radiation, according to Lum. They used "all the tools in the toolkit" for Wanhoff's care.

According to a news release from LLUMC, oncologist Evelyn Mendoza, MD, began a chemotherapy regimen paired with immunotherapy (monoclonal antibodies). This was a new treatment protocol for triple-negative breast cancer — based on findings of a major clinical trial demonstrating patients' "incredible responses" to a combination of chemotherapy and monoclonal antibodies, according to Lum.

Wanhoff received the treatment just a year after its FDA approval, and according to Lum, this type of good outcome wasn't possible five years ago.

"This is a new protocol that has just transformed how we think about triple negative breast cancer," says Lum. "It's the kind of personalized medicine that everybody's been waiting for. Incredible, very active research in the field has transformed the prognosis for this terribly aggressive breast cancer that she had."

Following that treatment came daily radiation treatments with onoclogist Jessica Jutzy, at LLUMC-Murrieta, to keep the cancer from growing back. Wanhoff was grateful the hospital was "right around the corner" during those 30 days, and even more so for the team who helped support her, whether holding her hand or treating her with kindness.

"Please listen to your body. We know what's normal and what's not. If you're having pain or an unusual sensation, please get it checked out to know that you're okay, or should something come up, your team can plan an appropriate form of attack and help you get through this."