When Bethany was in her late 20s, she used to find lumps in her breasts that turned out to be either swollen lymph nodes or cysts and would eventually go away. But when she was 33, she neglected to get one lump checked and it turned out to be cancer.

She shares her journey of how she went from not believing in medicine to blending the natural healing world with Western medicine and how the fear of recurrence pushed her to make big life changes.

When did you start to feel something may be off?

I found [the] first lump in my late 20s. At that time, I had a career as a yoga therapist, worked in wellness for many years, studied mindfulness and ate organic. I consider myself a really healthy person. I have no family history of cancer. But I did find a lump in my breast [so] I went and got it checked out. It was just a swollen lymph node or a cyst and it went away. I had very dense breast tissue. I had maybe four or five of those.

The first one [was] very scary. I didn’t realize there could be lumps that weren’t cancer. When you have dense breast tissue, it means it’s lumpy. Over time, those lumps would change and work themselves out so I learned how to monitor them, take them in and I felt I [had] a pretty good rhythm.

Fast forward to 33 [years old]. I found another one and decided not to get this one taken in and checked out. By that time, I already had enough of them and it’s always turned out to be nothing. I [didn’t] feel like going through that [whole] ordeal. I didn’t have health insurance at the time either. I was paying out of pocket for anything doctor related. I wasn’t very motivated to get that one checked out.

I first found the lump [in] November 2014. Over time, I noticed that it did start to grow. I talked myself out of it. I told myself that it was possibly a fibroadenoma. It’s just another swollen cyst. I’m so healthy. I don’t have a family history.

It wasn’t until the following summer [that] I felt another lump in my armpit and I’m like, Hmmm, that’s different. I had a really good girlfriend who was also a yoga teacher. Very healthy, lives a healthy lifestyle, has a great attitude about life, and she was diagnosed with a really aggressive form of sarcoma — stage 4 right off the bat — and it started as a pain in her hamstring, which she just thought was something from yoga. When she got diagnosed, that was definitely the wake-up call of, “Hey, you’re not immune to this. Young bodies get cancer.” I didn’t know much about it. I didn’t know many people. That really prompted me to get things checked out.

Finally getting an ultrasound and mammogram

I still felt off. Finally, I was like, “I think I need an ultrasound or a mammogram.” And he said, “Okay, but just remember that mammograms cause cancer.” That’s a big story out there that prevents a lot of women from just going to a doctor and getting things checked out. I said, “Screw that. Maybe. I don’t know, but I have some big lumps here and I need to know what these are.”

I’m so happy I listened to that inner voice. I would have loved to turn her on nine months before when I first felt the lump, which is a big part of why I tell my story now. You are not too young [or] too healthy to get cancer. It can happen to anybody. Cancer loves bodies. It is just looking for a place to grow and thrive.

I did go the route of an ultrasound and a mammogram, which showed very suspicious activity. By that point, the lumps were protruding. You could see it coming out [of] my breast. A biopsy is what confirmed it.

What was that moment when you said you needed to see what this is?

I was driving home from my third or fourth appointment with the naturopath and I expressed my concern one last time. “I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable with this.” His answer: mammograms cause cancer. I did respond, “I already have the lumps. Do you think they’re going to magically turn into cancer if I get my first mammogram? Do you think that that’s the case?” He [got] startled and [said], “Well, you do what you need to do.” I’m like, “I am.”

I actually kind of stormed out of that office, got in the car, and got my mom on the phone. My mom has a background in nursing. The whole time she’s like, “Go to the doctor. Who is this guy? Seems like a quack. Go to a doctor.”

Dealing with “scanxiety”

At that point, I just got trained in this mindfulness practice of inquiry called The Work of Byron Katie so I have all these tools for dealing with stress. That’s literally my career at that time. During the diagnostic phase, when I still couldn’t figure things out, it really started dawning on me: Oh my god, this could be cancer. What if this is cancer?

I completely spiraled downhill. My mind was full of worst-case scenarios and all I could think was I have cancer. My life is over. All my dreams are done. My relationships are over. This is going to absolutely crush my family. I couldn’t see any kind of good or positive outcome in this situation.

I was just torturing myself for not getting things checked out sooner. Thoughts like, It’s my fault. I did something wrong to create this in some way. Obviously, I wasn’t healthy enough or good enough or a good enough person. I had all this self-blame going on and with my mind full of all of those beliefs, all those emotions, I just spiraled down and didn’t want to leave my bed. I was depressed. I was lashing out at people that were trying to help me. I’m like, “You don’t understand. You don’t know what this is like.” It felt so lonely.

Then another question of that process is, “How do you react when you believe that your life is over?” And that’s the depression, that’s spiraling down, that’s the lack of motivation to even take a walk around the block or eat [healthily]. I wasn’t motivated to do anything and [was] angry, rageful, and just lost.

Then I asked myself the final question of that process: “Who would I be in this same situation?” I have a biopsy scheduled at that point. Who am I in this situation? I don’t know what it is, but who am I without the thought my life is over? I had to sit and meditate in that space for a bit. Another thought would come in. I’m like, “Put out that thought. Who am I without that thought?” It slowed down my mind enough to come back to reality.

[At] that moment, [the] reality was there’s no proof there’s cancer at that moment. I have the next step, which is the biopsy scheduled. How grateful I am that I’m able to do that. I’m breathing. I actually felt really good physically without the thoughts. I have more energy. I’m not so tense. I’m seeing I have a lot of support around me.

Then I move into turning these thoughts around — My life is over → My life isn’t over — and looking for some examples of that. In reality, I’m alive. I’m speaking. I’m looking at this body. I’m moving. I’m breathing. I’m eating. I’m digesting, I’m showering. I’m alive. My life is not over. It’s happening right now. Then I started to look at even if it was cancer, how could it be true that my life isn’t over, you know? Or maybe my life is just beginning?

What was your reaction to the diagnosis?

By the time I heard those words, “You have cancer,” it was a few weeks after my 34th birthday. I was at home sitting on the couch, watching TV. I had known the results could come in any time. While I say I could find peace with cancer, I was still stalking my phone like crazy. I remember thinking, Should I get a car wash? Eh, no, I’ll just stay. I’ll just stay here.

My husband had just come home. I saw the number on the phone. [It] was the PCP’s office and it was just like, “Oh my god. Oh my god. This is it!” [My] heart rate goes up and he’s sitting next to me.

She was so kind. She said, “You know, I wanted to tell you as soon as possible. I know you’ve been waiting on the results and this is the part of my job I really don’t love. This is the hard part of my job.”

Treatment

My first chemo was [at] the beginning of October. Within mid-October, I was bald.

They staged it at a late stage 2, early 3. There was a large mass in my breasts, a few little satellite nodules, and my left armpit had a tumor [that’s] 4.8 cm. That was the one that I felt. Some other ones were looking positive as well.

I asked — of course, Miss Natural Me, was very naive — and I’m like, “Oh, so we could just scoop that out in a little surgery and I’ll be cancer-free by the end of the year, right? That’s how this works.” And no, that was not how that worked.

I showed up to the office and again, my breast surgeon — so kind — is looking at me like a human. I know not everybody gets that experience and I was just so grateful. She’s holding my hand. She’s walking me through everything.

We couldn’t do surgery right away. She said, “If we did [the] surgery, it would be very mutilating to your body, especially in the armpit area, because you might lose the use of your arm. With that, I think we should do chemotherapy first with the goal of shrinking everything and then be able to have less invasive surgery.” That sounded like a great plan because I’m like, “I love my arm. I very much would like to use it.” So that was clear.

Then she said, “Five to six months of very aggressive chemotherapy, then surgery, then six weeks of radiation, and then five to 10 years of hormone therapy.” And that’s where I was like, “Are you kidding?” I just looked at her stunned.

The stories I heard about chemo [and] what I saw in movies are my reference points of chemo being poison. I actually challenged some of those beliefs, specifically that chemo is poison to my body and that it’s poisonous to me. I found the opposite. Chemo is healing my body when I took it through that process.

You read the side effects, it’s terrifying. Imagine this future of bald, vomiting, gray skin. No quality of life is where my mind was going at first. Then as I started walking through it in inquiry, it was like, “I don’t know if it’s poisonous to me. I’ve never had it. I don’t know how’d my body react. I’m young, healthy, and strong. There’s a lot of complementary natural ways to support side effects and I’m actually pretty excited to learn more about that stuff.”

I started blending the natural healing world with this Western medicine world. [I] also looked at my other beliefs about Western medicine. You hear, “Oh, Big Pharma is only in it for money,” or “Doctors aren’t human. They’re just trying to make you sick.” These were the things I was hearing at the time in the natural world. I laugh at a lot of it now. Maybe that’s true in some cases but I’m looking at my doctors holding my hand, looking me in the eye, and crying with me. That’s a human right here. And you know what? They want what I want: to be cancer-free and live a good life. It doesn’t really look good on them if I’m dying next week. They’d run out of patients really quickly. It was just seeing this other world of medicine.

I became so grateful. It became a privilege. I’m so lucky I have treatment options.

I decided to throw a hair party. I had a friend, a yoga client, who had a hair studio. He opened it up on a Sunday. I brought friends and family in and we had champagne and sushi. It was a really fun day and a special moment.

I had so much hair come out. I also was able to donate it. I found an organization that makes wigs for young children who have been affected by cancer. I just thought if I can’t have this hair, the thought of little kids running around playgrounds wearing it just made me smile. So I did that.

I started chemo with a little pixie cut and I really thought that I would bypass any emotions about actually losing my hair. I was like, “Yeah, I got this.”

Day 16 was the morning I actually did. It was exactly when they told me it would be. I started feeling like my scalp was really tender. I woke up at 6 a.m. I looked [at] the pillow and there were clumps of hair. I had heard about that when I was starting to read books. I was like, “Okay. This is it. It’s happening. Okay. Okay. We can do this.”

I leave my husband in bed and I go to the shower. I had read that you could rub it out when it was wet in the shower so I’m rubbing it out more and more. I’m looking at the floor and [there are] clumps. They look like little wet hamsters all over the shower floor. I’m trying to build myself up like, “Okay, okay, you’re good. You’ve got this.”

The steam got to be so intense that I thought I might pass out in the shower so I stumbled out. The moment that I was not prepared for was looking in the mirror. These patches of hair and zigzags. I had no idea who was looking back at me in the mirror.

I lost it, just started screaming. My husband came in and I was just like, “Get it all out now! Get your shaver!” And he’s like, “But my shaver won’t work on heads. It’s only for faces.” And I was like, “Go buy one!” I grabbed scissors. I started cutting this part [in front]. I was a disaster. I can laugh about it now because it’s one of the funniest stories but at the moment, it was so dramatic. Finally, a few hours later, he had gotten the shaver. I charged it and just shaved it all off.

I think I have this pattern of “It’s so hard” right in the beginning, I freak out, and I let myself freak out. Those emotions are natural and they’re meant to flow. Then eventually, I’ll make peace with it and be like, “How can I make this fun? What can we do here?” I took that mindset to each phase of treatment.

Deciding on breast cancer surgery options

After chemo, then the surgery decision. Chemo shrunk my tumors. It was amazing. It was like magic. It shrunk them down to microscopic level. [There were] barely signs of cancer come Christmas that year. 

I had all surgery options — a lumpectomy, a single, or a double. I completely tortured myself [during the] decision-making process because I loved my natural breasts. But, at the same time, I saw that my breasts are very dense. They’re very good at growing lumps. Now, would I have cancer again? I don’t know, but I’d have a lump again and that would mean I’d have to go through ultrasounds, mammograms, and biopsies over and over.

I also had very large breasts for my body. They yanked on my neck and shoulders and I had headaches frequently [so] I was entertaining the idea of what might it feel like to not have [them]. After torturing myself for a long time around the decision, I did choose a double mastectomy for my long-term peace of mind and that felt good for me.

What was the next step?

I had some complications [during] healing. I had this thing called cording in my armpit that showed up after surgery. It was weird. I did not read it in the very long list of side effects. These strings developed. Literally, they look like piano chords and they would go from [the wrist] all the way down through my armpit to my breast. I couldn’t lift my arm and it really hurt.

When I first brought it to the attention of my breast surgeon, she’s like, “You’re going to physical therapy right away. We have to resolve this before radiation.” Because when you’re in radiation for breast cancer, you have to hold [your arms up] for 10 minutes and be really still. She goes, “First of all, the cords? They don’t really know the cause of it.” They don’t know. They could last forever. They could be gone soon. There could be more. It was just very unknown. Of course, I freaked out about that.

I went into physical therapy and just loved my physical therapist. She was wonderful. It was like private yoga therapy for healing after surgery. I have a background in yoga therapy, but healing from a double mastectomy, I felt really nervous to push my body. This was unfamiliar territory to me. I tell everyone now, “If your insurance covers physical therapy, do it. Don’t wait for a complication.” I didn’t understand why everyone wasn’t just recommended to do it. I felt it was awesome.

I started healing really quickly. She would massage the cords. They would pop and break apart. It was creepy.

Maintenance treatment

After radiation, all the big parts of cancer therapy were over. I got on a hormone pill called Tamoxifen, which is to basically block if there were remaining cancer cells floating around, microscopic ones. It would ideally bind the cancer cell’s mouths closed so [they] couldn’t feed on estrogen. That was a daily pill. That actually went great. It was very easy for me.

There I am just kind of released and they’re like, “See you in three months.” I had to wait about a year for that final reconstruction surgery, which is a big deal but it’s also not really cancer treatment. It’s working with a plastic surgeon.

It was a really interesting moment for me because here I am, physically cancer-free. I made it through the biggest parts of treatment and at first, it was exciting. Elating. Then I just got bombarded with so many emotions again: fear of recurrence.

I’m making friends in [the] cancer world and some of them aren’t here anymore. I’m just seeing these other possibilities. Big emotions were coming up.

Here I was, cancer-free. And that birthed my whole philosophy of cancer that being cancer-free, true freedom from cancer, it’s a state of mind. It is not a diagnosis. It’s not a physical condition so I had to find cancer-free again in my life. That involved letting these emotions flow, letting the grief come out, and then questioning [the] thoughts [that] cancer will come back [and] the beliefs about my relationship. 

Making life changes after achieving remission

I made huge changes in my life. I use the fear of cancer coming back in a different way where I don’t have to live in this constant fear.

It was really clear to me that I was done living in Texas. I’d actually been done 12 years earlier and just didn’t [leave] for many different reasons. But I was ready to go.

I had started spending summers in Colorado. I’ve always loved Colorado. I started writing. I wrote [at] the beginning of my journey. I shared my whole journey on a blog and on social media. It felt really good to write and that was very healing for me, so was sharing, and that connected me with so many amazing people in the cancer community as well.

Some answers became clear. I want to write a book about this experience. I want to help others. I could have fun in cancer. And so I did that.

My relationship was not working for me anymore. [In] the summer of 2019, I’m done treatment, in remission, feeling good, and I’m making big changes. I packed all of my belongings into my [car], separated from my partner, and drove to Colorado to start a new life to put [myself] first and see what I really want.