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Rebecca

@fever.to.well

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Here to talk #breastcancer in your 30s & life after treatment - let’s normalize all the good/bad/ugly that comes with it.
ER+ /PR+ /Her2(-) #brca2

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Worst club, best members. And now, one of the newest members happens to be one of my bestest friends from forever. I am so proud — thought not surprised — of Degan for handling this diagnosis with such grace and strength and humor. With optimism and vulnerability.

And I’m proud of her willingness to share her story in real time. As the saying goes, what we are brave enough to share today will become someone else’s survival guide tomorrow.

So, to my Degan: we are bonded forever. We’ve been through it all and have really done this whole life together. And while I don’t love this particular shared experience for us, I will be honored to be there for you holding you up the way you were there for me. And once this is behind you (as I know it WILL be) let’s follow it all up with a much-deserved trip to Europe, ok? New mantra: More Europe, less cancer 🙃

LOVE YOU. You’ll be dancin again in no time 🩷 by @fever.to.well

Five years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and found these women on instagram and they kept me sane and now I’m okay. Erin was one of the very first. Technically I found her before even being diagnosed.. one night in those very early days when my mom was sleeping next to me and I was too scared about my forthcoming biopsy results to sleep. I took to instagram… and there she was. Surviving on the heals of her treatment…. I saw that and knew I could do it too.

Tonight we all met up to raise a glass to our Erin. Newly wed. Glowing happy. And moving out of town. I cannot explain how impactful you were on my life - but I know you get it. Thank you my sweet girl … now go on and live your big full happy life. You really and truly deserve it 🩷 by @fever.to.well

So proud of my girl @mskatesurvives for getting a well-deserved honor at Tuesday night’s Hot Pink Gala thrown by @bcrfcure. She is being honored because of her advocacy for research (research first and forever) and because she has so positively impacted so many in the breast cancer community — starting, quite possibly literally, with ME.

I may have been the first person in the BC universe to stumble upon the wonderful Ms Kate! I found her page after being diagnosed myself… she was my age, a lawyer, a regular woman whose IG had focused on friends, family, and home renovation projects… until getting randomly and harshly interrupted by a cancer diagnosis 3 weeks earlier — just 3 weeks before my own diagnosis. I found such solace in her words. She quickly became my cancer guru (ick - sorry) and I found a sense of calm and hope that I had worried I may never know again. The cherry on top is her wicked sense of humor ;) and that we both hate the word “journey” to describe anything other than an actual fun vacation. When the world shut down things really ratcheted up — my cancer friends became my lifeline. I’m oddly grateful for all of it.

Flash forward 5 years to today. By a miracle, I got to become a mom after this whole ordeal. And last night, Kate and I met for dinner in the city with our families — and our kiddos played while the grownups caught up. Last night was a snapshot of how lucky we got and how lucky we are.

So grateful for this friendship. So proud of my friend. by @fever.to.well

I loved this show. I mean it when I say I laughed out loud and I cried… really laughed and REALLY cried. I’m not sure if this will make a lot of sense but… When I was first diagnosed with cancer, there was a brief moment where I was very very terrified that I might learn I had very little time left to live. Luckily, that was not the case and I am OK today as I write this. But, I remember in that moment feeling very scared of death. And I remember talking to people about whether they thought death was scary versus sad. I remember feeling like nobody could actually comfort me about what might be coming (bc nobody knows) and feeling acutely aware that the people who I can typically depend on to keep me safe would be powerless — nothing they could do about my dying. They wouldn’t be there to help me after I was dead and that felt extremely scary to me. So I realized that I am scared of dying. Death and whatever may or may not loom on the other side is really scary to me.

So I really cannot tell you how struck I was by that speech in the final episode about death… and what actually happens when we die. It will stay with me for the rest of my life. I don’t know who came up with that bit of writing. I don’t know how much of it is true, but the way they discussed the actual act the body dying was incredibly comforting … and devastating. But mostly grounding and comforting.

Bravo to the creators of this show. It is the most authentic expression of this experience I’ve seen and watching it was really something else. by @fever.to.well

How it started ➡️ how it’s going. Reflections (literally 😝) on January 10.

5 years ago I was - for all intents and purposes - diagnosed with cancer. The official diagnosis came on January 14 but on January 10, 2020 I had a terrible mammogram, followed by a pretty scary conversation with the radiologist and a follow-up call from my most trusted doctor all but “officially” saying it was cancer.

5 years later. I just touched down in London for a quick weekend trip to see my beloved @lstickers and meet my sweet godson.

The way cancer comes into my life now is different than it was. It’s less recent and raw, less real, less scary, less constant. If it comes up for me these days, it tends to be a curiosity about what might have been… most specifically around the fertility and family building conversation. I tried to have a second baby but was unsuccessful. I find myself wondering if in another lifetime, without having to press pause at a critical time in my fertility window… without having to remove my ovaries and forgo more egg freezing, might I have been able to have another? Or would I have been someone who struggled to conceive even under the best and healthiest more normal circumstances. I’ll never know. And so I wonder sometimes about ‘what if never cancer’.

I’m very happy with my life today and do feel my perspective and priorities have shifted for the better. I know who and what matters to me. So! I don’t share this for any kind of sympathy — more just that I take anniversaries as an opportunity to reflect on how I’m feeling. And to document it so that someone who gets diagnosed tomorrow might find my page and see my little 5-year temperature check and feel a little more hopeful … even if only for a minute.

Things are really good and I am really grateful. I have my Calvin, I have my family and friends, and I have my health. I am happy. And I do occasionally sit and wonder about what if this … what if that… but then I put those thoughts away and move on bc I don’t have time! I have a toddler. And a job. And a whole big busy life to get busy living.

🍒

I can’t believe it’s been FIVE years. by @fever.to.well

Heading into 2025 like…

Hope everyone had happy, happy holidays 🕎🎄🥂 and that this new year is a great one 🤞🏼🪄✨ by @fever.to.well

Perhaps one silver lining of cancer treatment during a global pandemic was that it forced me to seek connections with people in new ways - namely, via instagram. Somehow we found each other, weathered that shitstorm and now get to meet up and hang out at boisterous cozy holiday bars smack dab in the middle of New York City ✨

We missed you @shan_tiunyc 😘 by @fever.to.well

Had my FIFTH cancer surgery yesterday Nov 5 at 7:45am. To the survivors and thrivers here who voted for Trump, what’s the game plan when Trump’s promise to repeal the ACA is made good on and lifetime caps are back and you can’t get coverage with preexisting conditions?

I can’t even begin to imagine the cost of my life-saving care to the insurance companies since my diagnosis in January 2020.

I could make another post about those who have and/or hope to build families using IVF and surrogacy… and by the way, I had four highest grade embryos. 5AA. We did transfers in December 2021, January 2022, June 2024, October 2024. One of them worked (thank god). So for the record, embryos are, sadly, not children 💔 I owe my greatest joy to IVF and surrogacy and liberal open-minded attitudes about what a family can look like… my heart breaks for those who won’t have these options, those who won’t be so lucky.

Honestly though, why didn’t you care enough about the future of women in this country who will not have the things you benefited so greatly from? Why wasn’t it important that future women in America have the same protections you had over the things you care most about: your own life. And your own children. by @fever.to.well

Long live IVF. And the freedom to make a family how you want, when you want 🩵

Vote accordingly. by @fever.to.well

Despite all living in the same(ish) place, it’s shockingly hard to get together - making it extra special when we do. Last night we did! And it was the best 🖤 so much good stuff on the horizon for these women! Cheers to that. by @fever.to.well

1/14/24: FOUR.

4 years since my diagnosis. Part of what’s so crazy about it all is that my cancer diagnosis was the last thing that happened to me before life changed forever for everyone - before the insanity of Covid. It feels like a lifetime ago and yet the fact that 4 whole years have passed feels impossible.

So four years. We are creeping ever closer to 5. The big benchmark. I still feel jinxy when I talk too definitely about cancer being in the past… as if it might come back again… as if each step further from diagnosis might be one step closer to recurrence. Who knows. Thats the wildest part. Even though I don’t think of cancer often, I always go back to what @mskatesurvives so perfectly said, I won’t ever feel comfortable saying out loud that I “survived” cancer until the day I actually die of something else. I just won’t and that’s just part of the deal with this. As she also said - that’s not an invitation 😝

Grateful for each day I have. And reminded constantly of the ultimate truth: If you have your health, you have everything. This random photo here is a photo that my cousin took, of me strolling through Florence last summer, pushing my little baby in the sunshine. It’s a picture of basically everything I had hoped to have one day, in my scaredest moments, when I feared in a genuine way that my life might get cut short. A picture of all the things I wanted and feared I would not have. In a nutshell this nothing photo is a photo of everything.

I’ve scheduled to get my ovaries out this spring - that’s my next big upcoming step in prioritizing my health. I feel ready to do it. And I won’t miss monthly lupron injections!!

Sending love. And hoping for many more years of good health.

#breastcancer by @fever.to.well