

I usually feel that somehow this story happened to someone else. At 21 years old, I was diagnosed with stage 3 Carcinosarcoma in my right breast. I underwent eight months of treatment and thought that the nightmare was over on June 13, 2000, a date that I would celebrate almost every year with family and friends. Fifteen years later, on July 25th, 2014, after a return to Montreal for my annual check up, did this nightmare re-emerge with a second primary diagnosis of Invasive Ductal Caranoma in my left breast, followed by a positive test for the BRCA1 gene. This time, I was a wife and a mother of two little girls who just started preschool and senior kindergarten. I sat down with them at my kitchen table to try to explain why mommy’s hair was going to fall out, how our family will be in and out of our home to help us, and how some of the time, I would just need to rest. But at the end of the day, what was of upmost importance was that I maintained the positive attitude I found 15 years before. That I stayed true to who I was regardless of what I was going through or what I looked like and that my daughters would be able to look back at this moment in time and know that I was a brave, tough, strong willed advocate who persevered and was incredibly grateful for the love and support of everyone around me.