In September of 2007 Sarah was pregnant with twins, a firefighter/paramedic for the city of Portsmouth and still working. With two step children and a 5 year old daughter, life was busy. She found a lump on her breast taking a shower one morning and an ultrasound showed an abnormality. The thought was that it may be a blocked milk duct, however, a biopsy was taken to be sure.

On October 9th, her 36th birthday, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and 12 hours later Anika and Alex were born. In November she had lymph nodes removed for testing and developed a severe infection. By February of 2008 she had recovered and started chemotherapy. In May she had a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction followed by radiation therapy.

In January of 2009 she returned to work full time. In November of that year her mom, June, who had just about moved in with our family to help with the twins, died of metastatic breast cancer. It was a devastating loss. She had gone to the hospital for a lung biopsy and 10 days later was gone.

In January of 2010 Sarah developed increasing hip pain. Scans revealed that her cancer had returned to her femur, hip and spine. A titanium rod was surgically placed in her femur to help stabilize her leg. Radiation therapy was administered to her hip and spine to help reduce the pain. During this time cancer \"popped up\" in numerous places including her other femur, more of her spine and lymph nodes in her abdomen.

In May she was granted \"compassionate use\" by the FDA of a new and hopeful drug targeted for her type of aggressive triple negative breast cancer. Combined with chemotherapy, the hope was that this would prevent new tumors from growing and keep existing tumors dormant. The effect was immediate and throughout the summer no new tumors developed. She did develop severe swelling and pain in her left leg. It required hospitalization for most of the month of August. In September it spread to her right leg and again she spent the month of October in the hospital. A pain pump was placed at Dartmouth Hospital and instantly reduced her pain. Many of her doctors believe that cancer was not the cause and beyond the suggestion of it being RSD, a neuromuscular disease, no firm diagnosis has ever been made.

On November 19th, after experiencing an increase in back pain and some numbness in her feet, scans revealed that the cancer is once again spreading. An active search for clinical trials is being conducted by her doctor and other chemotherapy drugs are being considered.

Sarah's Updates

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