Things are looking up!

It’s this mindset that she used to pull herself back up after the shock of her diagnosis caused weeks of tears. She remembers feeling a lump in her breast while showering. Noting the difference, but still unconcerned, she later asked her husband if he could feel it. Believing it was simply a swollen lymph node, since Stephanie was so young and healthy with no family history of breast cancer, they went to the doctor for a sonogram, followed by a biopsy after the sonogram wasn’t definitive. This was the crack in the door that allowed negative thoughts to enter.

“I thought, gosh, this is kind of scary. This is way more than I thought was going to happen,” she admitted. “I thought they would give me some medicine to make it go away and that would be it. Then I got a call from the nurse saying the results from the biopsy were in, and they wanted to see me in the office. I could just tell by the tone of her voice that something wasn’t right. I asked her if it was bad, and she said ‘Well, it’s not good.’ And at that point I just started sobbing. I had to hand the phone to my husband. We grabbed my daughter, who was two, and we went straight to the doctor. The whole ride there, my husband held my hand while I cried.”

At her general practitioner’s office, they were able to determine that Stephanie had cancer, but they needed to refer her to an oncologist to determine the exact type, stage and treatment. Through more tears, she chose a treatment path with the oncologist that included a double mastectomy and more than a dozen rounds of chemotherapy. She still didn’t want to tell others about her diagnosis, and she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word, “cancer”. “My mom was the only person I was able to tell, ‘I have cancer’, Stephanie shared. “I couldn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t want to tell anyone else.”

Within a month of her January 2022 diagnosis, Stephanie had surgery before her genetic test ultimately revealed she had a genetic link to breast cancer, even though no women in her family had ever been diagnosed. While immediately concerned for her own daughter, Stephanie began looking for any positives: “I realized, it’s good that we know now, so she can start getting checked earlier.”

While all of this had been happening in Stephanie’s life, she was in the midst of pursuing her degree in Social Work at the University of Texas, Arlington. On track for a December 2022 completion, she didn’t want anything to deter her from that goal. Not cancer. Not treatment. Not if she could help it. Without wanting to draw attention to herself, she learned how to “batch” her schoolwork around surgery and chemo regimens and the brutal after-effects of each. She wore a wig and ball cap to classes, and remarkably, she challenged her organizational skills and planned around downtime, where she knew she was going to need extra rest and recovery. As soon as she could, she would make up for lost time with a continued focus to stay in line with her graduation date goal.

“It was bad,” revealed Stephanie. “I would have chemo on Fridays and be there for six hours. I’d get home and fall asleep. I was so sick, I couldn’t feed myself. My whole weekend was sleep, and then I’d go to school on Mondays. Sometimes I’d still be physically hurting, but I’d still go, because I was so focused on graduating in December.”

Although it was extremely challenging, Stephanie felt it was worth the push not only to remain on schedule, but also to keep her mind focused. She admitted that if she had more downtime, she would spend too much time thinking about her diagnosis and treatment. She didn’t want to allow herself to get pulled down, and the schoolwork was a great distraction and positive goal, although now much more ambitious, because her memory was affected by treatment.

“I took on an additional class at Tarrant County Community College in the summer, as well as an internship,” she explained. “It required so much memory. That’s what I struggled with the most. I’m still struggling with it. I would come home crying, because I was so frustrated. I wanted to have the same mental capacity I had before, and I didn’t.”

But every day, Stephanie would take her thoughts captive. No matter what the day held. She reminded herself over and over that she was going to walk across the stage for graduation and she was going to make her family proud. She kept visualizing that moment and how should would feel. It was a major motivator for her.

“I feel like I learned how to be hard-working from my mom,” Stephanie shared through tears. “She’s always taught me to focus on goals, put in hard work and you can achieve anything. So I focused on how proud would she be and how proud my dad would have been. I also wanted to be able to show my daughter, Olivia anything is possible as long as you put your mind to it. I had to believe it myself, too. I told myself I can’t be sad or think that I can’t do it when I have schoolwork to do. I have a graduation I want to go to!”

At her internship, Stephanie was known for her hard work and for getting things done. She recalled a time when one of her supervisors commented about typical office workload complaints when co-workers gathered at the water cooler. Soon, someone paused and said, “Wait. What are we complaining about? Let’s pull a Stephanie! We don’t have half as much going on as she does!” They quickly realized they could have a better attitude, and they changed their mindset. “It made me cry when they told me,” she said. “Because I didn’t even realize that anyone would see what I was going through and apply it to their lives, so that meant a lot.”

Stephanie is very close with her mother, and she’s tremendously grateful that she’s been able to be with her family though her treatment. She’s helped enormously with Olivia, who Stephanie believes “came at the perfect time.” “She was still little, but she didn’t need as much of me as an infant. Sometimes she needed me to play, and it was a great distraction. Sometimes she would go into comfort mode. She could tell I was sad, and she would tell me it’s okay. Her words meant so much to me.”

Olivia rode along with Stephanie when she went to get her head shaved. Stephanie was nauseous the whole way there. She had tried to hold onto every bit of hair she had for as long as possible. She was so afraid of what she would look like and what others would think, especially Olivia, who waited in the car for her. After returning with the head cover of a ball cap, Stephanie asked her daughter, “Do you want to see my head?” Olivia asked, “Where did your hair go?” Stephanie explained that she cut it all off, and when they arrived at home, Olivia looked at her and said, “Mommy, you’re so beautiful!”

Stephanie explained that she tells her daughter every day that she’s beautiful, but she wasn’t expecting to hear it in return. Especially then. “Going through those physical changes, it was so helpful to hear, because kids can be brutally honest,” she said. “She helped me believe it.”

She was also reminded of a childhood memory of her own, when she was around the same age as Olivia. Stephanie would come home and tell her mom about other girls in class and how pretty they looked because of their hair color or style, or a perhaps a new clip or embellishment in their hair. She recalled her mom always being quick to remind her that just because she looked different doesn’t mean she’s any less pretty. Her mom would follow up with, “You’re pretty because you’re Stephanie. What you have inside is what makes you pretty. How you treat others matters most.”

Stephanie still thinks about that and added, “It doesn’t matter what I look like as long as I have good intentions, treat everyone fairly and lend a helpful hand. That will have more of a lasting image with others than what my hair looks like or what I’m wearing that day. My mom taught me how to love myself before all of this, and I’m teaching Olivia how to love herself. I actually feel so comfortable now. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more comfortable in my own skin (even without hair).”

When Stephanie was growing up, she was known as “Smiley.” Her friend had given her the nickname, and it stuck. When she was diagnosed, she found herself crying all the time, though. She shared that she would be awake in the middle of the night, thinking “where is Smiley? Where is the real Stephanie, because this is not her!”

One night, when everyone in her home was asleep and everything was quiet, she decided to have an honest conversation with God. She shared her frustration and asked for His help to learn through this process and to be taken care of. In addition, she asked Him for specific “little signs” that He was with her, and that she would be ok. “I want to be that smiley person again, but just help me,” she pleaded!

One morning, as she was receiving chemo treatment with ice packs on her hands and feet, she looked down and noticed a little heart had formed on the ice pack. She took a picture and texted it to her mom, who prayed every single time for her to be able to withstand the treatment. Stephanie’s mom received the text at the exact moment she finished praying and said “Amen!” They both thought it was no coincidence. This was one of many little signs she saw along the way.

And she’s learned a lot, too. Stephanie believes there are lessons she wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise. She expressed a newfound peace about everything not needing to done a “certain way”. She’s found that it’s okay let people help, and it’s fine to relax when they do things differently than she would have done. She went so far as to say she’s less tense about many things, even hair. “I would never have cut my hair this short,” she giggled as she spoke and brushed her hand over her hair. “Now I’m so excited to experience all these different hair styles as it grows out!”

Her whole life, Stephanie has always tried to find one small positive in everything she does, but before her diagnosis, she had never had to endure anything this serious. Even so, she has still been able to find good in little things, and it has really helped. She stressed the importance of positive thoughts and belief. “I know it can be hard,” she empathizes. “But whatever you’re going through can totally take over.”

“Try to see just a little bit of good in everything,” she encourages. “It’s so easy to focus on the negativity. It’s so easy to see what’s going wrong. Yes, it may be really bad, but find one good thing…focus on that. It feeds your brain all this positivity, to where you can say, ‘yes, I see the negativity, but it’s fine over there. I don’t want that here, in my head.”

Stephanie’s treatment was complete just weeks before her graduation in December. Yes, she did it - without delay. And even with Magna Cum Laude honors! This goal had kept her strong through treatment, and she was able to accomplish it (and even won a contest for the best graduation cap design!) “Once I crossed that stage it was even better than I thought,” she said with stars in her eyes. “It was so worth everything!”

After a semester break, Stephanie will begin grad school in August. She told Brighter, “I always thought I wanted to help kids, but after this, a switch has gone off in my head. I now want to work with kids or women who have been diagnosed with cancer. I’m so excited to help!” And we’re excited to see how she will use her experience and positivity to make a difference. We’re smiling just thinking about it. Wanna bet she is too?!