ST. LOUIS — Brittany Peterson held back tears as she recalled the day she received her breast cancer diagnosis.
“I thought, ‘How much time do I have left with my kids? What does this mean for my future, and what do we do from here?’” she said.
Peterson of St. Charles was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in January. She’s just 30 years old.
“Nothing really prepares you to get that call from a nurse that you have breast cancer,” she said.
One day, while breastfeeding the youngest of her three children, she felt a lump.
“I have had clogged milk ducts before, so I just assumed that’s what it was. So, I waited for it to clear up. It didn’t clear up,” she said.
In fact, the lump started to grow.
“My tumor was about three and a half centimeters. That’s considered pretty large. It’s just incredible how quickly it grew, and I knew it was time to get checked out,” she said.
So, she made a trip to a specialist. Washington University Radiation Oncologist Dr. Debbie Bennett at Siteman Cancer Center said she’s seeing more young women make that trip than she did at the start of her career.
“Most of our patients that are diagnosed with breast cancer are between 50 and 80 years old and are women. But it can affect anyone. Men can be diagnosed. We feel like we’re seeing breast cancer at an earlier age too. We’re seeing women come in at 30, sometimes even in their 20s. For the most part, a lot of those women are fine but sometimes they’re not,” Dr. Bennett said.
Dr. Bennett said breakthroughs in treatment options have opened more doors for women like Peterson.
“The treatments are so much better than they used to be. There’s a lot of hope. There’s reason to be hopeful for everyone,” she said.
High hopes began to fade for Peterson during her first rounds of chemotherapy.
“I couldn’t eat. I was sick a lot. There were many times my husband and I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the end of that chemo round,” she said.
But she did make it.
“I got to ring the bell… and that was a good day,” she told 5 On Your Side.
She didn’t know bad days were just beyond the horizon.
Peterson had a double mastectomy, developed an infection because her immune system was so weak after surgery, and as a result, had to have another surgery on her chest. Then she contracted COVID-19.
“That was a hard one for sure,” she said.
She said her doctors are treating the cancer aggressively so they could be sure it won’t come back. The treatment is turning out to be a long road.
“I’m about a week out from being finished with radiation,” she said. “I’m doing chemotherapy until September of next year. And in the middle of all that, I still have some reconstructive surgeries left.”
The treatments are draining, but her three little ones and loving husband help bring her smile back each day.
She shared this touching story with us:
“I was putting my 5-year-old to bed, and he said, ‘Mommy, why is the night longer than the day?’ I just got tears in my eyes. It was an ah-ha moment for me. I said, ‘Baby, the night isn’t longer than the day. The day is longer than the night and the sun will come up and we have hope for the morning.”
Their home is overflowing with hope.
“In the moments where it feels like life is falling apart, my husband has just held me up. And all I need is to see my kids’ smiles and that gives me the encouragement to keep going,” Peterson said.