Like most women in her family, Lee Garde has dense breasts, so it wasn’t unusual for her to get a call back for additional testing after her yearly mammogram. In June 2023, that additional testing led to a breast caner diagnosis.
“The doctor called and said something looked different, so she wanted to do a biopsy. She told me there was a 97% chance it was nothing,” Lee said. “I wasn’t worried. I stopped and brought scones to my appointment. After the biopsy, I put it out of my mind.”
Two days later, the phone rang. It was the hospital. “I was like, oh, no, this isn’t good,” said Lee. “I pulled out a chair and sat down. That’s how I found out I had invasive ductal carcinoma.” The diagnosis was a shock. There’s no family history of any of kind of cancer in Lee’s family.
Lee is a nurse in a short stay unit at a hospital, working with patients who come in for infusions, heart catheterizations and ports. She’s worked with people who have h mastectomies or lumpectomies but has never worked in the cancer realm. “I suddenly was going to have learn about cancer like everybody else does,” she said.
“By far, the hardest part was telling people I had cancer,” Lee said. “Especially my husband and kids.”
Lee chose to have treatment at a cancer clinic in a neighboring state. “We have insurance, and we have a car that could get us there, so we decided to do that,” she said. Because the shape of the tumor was odd – like a spider web – Lee had an MRI biopsy. “We were trying to decide if I’d have a lumpectomy or mastectomy, and while I was never afraid I was going to die, that fight or flight feeling, the physiological response, is very strong,” she said.
Lee’s breast cancer is ER/PR positive, HER2-negative. She did not need radiation therapy or chemotherapy, but she did have a mastectomy. She started anastrozole, which decreases the amount of estrogen the body makes, but she experienced difficult side effects. She’s now on letrozole, which has been easier for her to take. She also recently underwent DIEP flap reconstruction surgery.
Leading up to the DIEP flap surgery, Lee took to the skies, choosing to celebrate the one- year anniversary of learning she had breast cancer by jumping out of a plane. “I decided to do the DIEP surgery because I knew I didn’t want implants, and I knew I was going to need to get healthy enough to do the surgery,” she explained. “Once I decided on skydiving, I thought why not make a fundraiser out of it for Komen?”
For Lee, jumping out of a plane was about being courageous – but so was asking people to donate. “You really put yourself out there because you’re letting everyone know you’re fighting this fight, you have breast cancer,” Lee said. “Asking people for money was kind of a way to get some of my confidence back that cancer took away.”
Lee decided to raise money for Komen because of all the ways Komen helps people with breast cancer. “When I first got diagnosed and was trying to figure out what to do, I had so many questions,” she said. “I knew I could go to Komen’s website and get reliable information. There’s the Real Pink podcasts and there are support groups and advocacy and research.”
Recognizing the good things along the way during her treatment helped Lee. “It was important to recognize those things. We had gas money, we had a reliable car, things we didn’t always have,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to go through what I have, but people will get breast cancer, and the multifaceted things that Komen does need to be supported.”
Lee’s recovery from DIEP surgery will take about eight weeks. “When you have breast cancer, you realize you can do hard things,” she thinks. As a first-time skydiver, Lee jumped tandem with an instructor. “For me, jumping out of the plane was nothing compared to cancer. Once I stepped out of the plane, I just enjoyed the free fall. It was great.”
