Alli Coleman

Survivor

In June 2020, at 28 years old, I was diagnosed with Stage 3, ER-/PR+, HER2+, Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. At the time, I was 2 months postpartum with my son, and my daughter was 2 years old. I was scared to death.

The hardest part of being diagnosed was waiting. Waiting for the biopsy results, waiting to meet my oncologists, waiting for the gameplan, and waiting to see how well the treatments would work. Waiting is hard! Once I met with my oncologists, and a gameplan was in place, things felt less impossible. I went through 6 rounds of hard-hitting chemo, a double mastectomy, 30-something rounds of radiation treatment, continued targeted therapy, and now hormone blockers.

There were some days that I felt miserable. There were days that I felt hopeless. I was told to take one day at a time, and when that was too much, to take one moment at a time. I just had to keep moving forward. Having survivors to relate to has helped me tremendously. I love seeing other women who step up and cheer others on. I am thankful for everyone who shares their story in hopes of helping others.

Because seeing other survivor stories has helped me so greatly, I decided to be pretty transparent with my own story. I created an Instagram account, and I dedicated it to educating others about my journey.

In doing so, I have found hundreds of other women with similar stories to my own.

It has helped immeasurably! If you are newly diagnosed, I cannot encourage you enough to stop looking at what Dr. Google says can go wrong, and start looking at survivor stories so that you can see first hand how things can go right