Liz’s Recovery Squad

Updated July 2026: May 2026 has been a real kick in the pants, but here we are! On May 13 I was formally diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer - a poorly differentiated invasive ductal carcinoma. On June 11th I had a lumpectomy to remove the 4.7cm tumor, the surgeon was able to get clean margins and it had not spread to my lymph nodes, all great news! Despite the biopsy showing me as hormone positive and protein negative, the final pathology on the actual mass shows that it is weakly positive for estrogen receptors (11-20%) and negative for both progesterone and HER2. From a treatment standpoint, we're handling this like it's triple negative breast cancer - the only really effective treatment for prevention is chemo, and aggressive chemo at that. See Next Steps post for more info, but it'll be a solid 5 months of chemo. Infusions start on July 20th, followed by 2 weeks (9 sessions) of radiation. Thank you all who have been following up with me, or who have already sent support and love, I am deeply grateful and very overwhelmed (in a good way!) by how many people are rooting for me to kick this thing’s butt. I’ve created a wishlist on we got this.org: https://registry.wegotthis.org/registries/liz-cancer-recovery if you want to find something to send! Original pathology below: The good news is that testing shows it is only the one lump. Other good things are that it is positive for estrogen and progesterone receptors, which offers more options for long term care. It is negative for the HER2 protein. While that would normally indicate a slow growing, non aggressive cancer, the percentage of cells actively undergoing mitosis and splitting during my biopsy was 90%. Most likely we’re looking at a mix of cancer types, which is not great.