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Test Those Breasts ™️
This podcast by Jamie Vaughn is a deep-dive discussion on a myriad of breast cancer topics, such as early detection, the initial shock of diagnosis, testing/scans, treatment, loss of hair, caregiving, surgery, emotional support, and advocacy.
These episodes will include breast cancer survivors, thrivers, caregivers, surgeons, oncologists, therapists, and other specialists who can speak to many different topics.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and not all information in this podcast comes from qualified health care providers, therefore does not constitute medical advice. For personalized medical advice, you should reach out to one of the qualified healthcare providers interviewed on this podcast and/or seek medical advice from your own providers.
Test Those Breasts ™️
Episode 72: Elissa Kalver's Story of Courage, Innovation, and Community Impact
What does it take to rise above the challenges of a HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer diagnosis? Join us as I sit down with Elissa Kalver , a phenomenal survivor who was unexpectedly diagnosed just before her daughter's first birthday. From a life brimming with sports, adventures, and a thriving career in financial services and gym ownership, Elissa takes us through her journey of shock and resilience.
Navigating the turbulent waters of cancer while maintaining a strong family dynamic can be overwhelming. Elissa opens up about the crucial role of emotional boundaries, teamwork, and the importance of explaining cancer to young children through resources like Cancer Hates Kisses Book and The DOT Method. We delve into the inception of her nonprofit, "We Got This" , which was born out of the need for better support systems for cancer patients. Modeled after baby and wedding registries, this innovative platform makes it easier for patients to ask for help. Elissa's story underscores the entrepreneurial spirit and community-driven support that are vital in filling the gaps in cancer care.
Elissa's journey doesn't stop at personal survival; it extends into building a robust support network through her nonprofit initiative. The We Got This platform now offers registries, recommendations, and resources to aid patients and caregivers. Her message is clear: it's crucial to maintain one's identity & dignity while living with cancer & to balance the challenging moments with vibrant lives.
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I am not a doctor and not all information in this podcast comes from qualified healthcare providers, therefore may not constitute medical advice. For personalized medical advice, you should reach out to one of the qualified healthcare providers interviewed on this podcast and/or seek medical advice from your own providers .
Hello friends, welcome back to the Test those Breasts podcast. I am your host, jamie Vaughn. I'm a retired teacher of 20 years and a breast cancer thriver turned staunch, unapologetic, loud supporter and advocate for others, bringing education and awareness through a myriad of medical experts, therapists, caregivers and other survivors. A breast cancer diagnosis is incredibly overwhelming, with the mounds of information out there, and other survivors A breast cancer diagnosis is incredibly overwhelming, with the mounds of information out there, especially on Dr Google. I get it. I'm not a doctor and I know how important it is to uncover accurate information, which is my ongoing mission through my nonprofit. The podcast includes personal stories and opinions from breast cancer survivors and professional physicians, providing the most up-to-date information. At the time of recording Evidence, research and practices are always changing, so please check the date of the recording and always refer to your medical professionals for the most up-to-date information. I hope you find this podcast a source of inspiration and support from my guests. Their contact information is in the show notes, so please feel free to reach out to them. We have an enormous breast cancer community ready to support you in so many ways. Now let's listen to the next episode of Test those Breasts.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome back everyone to this episode of Test those Breasts. I am Jamie Vaughn, your host, and I am so excited to have my guest, alyssa Calver, on my show. I actually met Alyssa. We met on social media. I ran across you and I was really enamored with what you were doing, with your survivorship for your breast cancer. And just so my audience knows, alyssa was diagnosed with HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer in July of 2021, just a few days before her daughter's first birthday. Everyone asked how they could help and what they could do, which made her think about how easy it is it was to ask for help when she was pregnant or getting married, because she had gift registries I mean, go figure, that's what we have for weddings and baby showers and things like that. So she was inspired to create the very first nonprofit gift registry for cancer patients. Called. We got thisorg. How clever, alyssa. It's so great to have you on my show. How are you doing? Thank you, yes.
Speaker 2:So excited to be here and excited to chat, love seeing all your posts and everything you've been doing.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. I think it's really cool that we have a sisterhood like we do and I've actually put into the fold a brotherhood with male breast cancer and just having everyone come together to help in so many different ways. And later in the program I am going to talk to you about this new gift registry for cancer patients, because it's so dang brilliant. So I would love for you to share with our audience. Who Alyssa was before breast cancer, what were you doing? Audience, who Alyssa was before breast cancer, what were you doing? What was your mindset like?
Speaker 2:All the things. Yeah, I mean, I was always doing a lot of things throughout my life. I played sports in high school and through college and I always had definitely a desire for adventure and always keeping busy. That definitely kept me busy through my adult life too. I was previously mainly working in financial services for corporate retirement plans, most recently for ADP covering Southern California, and before that I actually owned a gym for several years as well a cardio boxing gym here in Woodland Hills in California and just kind of dipping my feet in all these fun areas to keep life exciting.
Speaker 2:I married the love of my life, my husband Eric, over 10 years ago and we met. We've been together now almost 15 years. We had, like you mentioned earlier, we gave birth to our daughter Ellie, in July of 2020. So there was a bit going on in the world then, and it was before her first birthday when things changed a bit. But I think the Alyssa that I was then has only been amplified in a lot of ways by my cancer diagnosis, which is a silver lining that I'm really proud of and grateful that I leaned into.
Speaker 1:Okay, what a great way to look at it. We look at ourselves before we had cancer and it's like we have all these hindsight I don't know just views about ourselves and what our lives were like. And to be able to take such a crazy piece of life and make it a silver lining, it's so inspiring and I'm just excited that you look at it that way. So with that, can you tell us what your diagnosis was, is what your treatments are like? Because you're still in treatment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was diagnosed initially.
Speaker 2:the phone call was about biopsies in my left breast and my lymph nodes in my armpit and that's when I found out that I had breast cancer and I knew that it was HER2 positive, ernp negative. And then it was after the PET scan when I found out that I had breast cancer and I knew that it was HER2 positive, ern pure negative. And then it was after the PET scan that I found out it had spread all throughout my liver. I had more cancer in my liver than I did in my breast and a little bit in my lower spine, l5. So I was metastatic de novo right off the bat. I have no genetic mutation or BRCA or anything like that. So it was definitely surprising without family history. And once that happened I hopped right into TCHP. So I was on Taxotere, carboplatin, herceptin and Progetta and then about halfway through that got a second opinion and we dropped the Carboplatin.
Speaker 2:But the initial eight rounds of chemo was very effective. I mean after that I didn't need a lumpectomy or anything. Everything had shrunk to as much as you could hope with metastatic disease. So I got to be on maintenance with Herceptin and Progetta for about four months until one of my scans came back with a recurrence in my left breast and then I started getting some really crazy headaches and it turned out that there were actually a couple mets in my brain as well. That did recur.
Speaker 2:About a year after my initial diagnosis, I was fortunate enough to go into a clinical trial that combined Nher2 with 2-catinib and that did an amazing job at breaking the blood-brain barrier, and I mean it was wild. Within a couple months my brain tumors had already shrunk about 80%, so I was really grateful for how well it was working. It just crushed my quality of life and it made it really, really hard to live. I was nauseous 10 to 14 days every three weeks and I really couldn't live a normal life. It was really hard. After six months of that and having such a full response, I decided to forego that treatment early in order to switch to the treatment that I've been on now for about two years, which is Zolota oral chemo, tucatinib still, and then back on Herceptin infusions.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you go in how often for those infusions?
Speaker 2:Every three weeks. For Herceptin yeah, just had it last week, and then Zolota 14 days on, seven days off, twice a day and Tucatinib twice a day, every day.
Speaker 1:And how does that affect your life? What does that look like in your life?
Speaker 2:It's definitely all relative. So you know, compared to the other treatments, this is a dream, compared to in her too, this is a walk in the park, but it's still chemo and it still has those side effects of mainly for me it's been severe fatigue. There's a lot of dryness that can happen in your hands and feet, which you know I was like oh, no big deal, but it can be really dangerous because you can end up with infections and other things. So I stay really on top of that. I do get a little nauseous, but it's been more manageable with meds, whereas on the Inher2, it was like no matter how much I was on top of my Zofran and Compazine, like I could not get a grasp on that, that nausea. So those have been the main things.
Speaker 2:They've definitely increased over time and we're almost two years in, so getting some more achiness, some back pain, but overall I've been really grateful for the quality of life you know I've been able to have, knowing that with metastatic disease you know you're on these treatments indefinitely, until they stop working, and that's what really crushed my spirit on, and her too, just because it wasn't just eight rounds or a set time.
Speaker 2:It was hopefully forever right, like you know, it'd be amazing if it just continued to work. I couldn't live on that. So what I'm on now I could and I hope that I get to continue on. I did recently find out that there's some growth in my left breast, but everything else has been really contained and doing great. So we're pausing a bit before we make any changes just because of how effective this treatment has been. So I'm in a bit of this really odd waiting period where I know that I have a bunch of tumors in my breasts but it has definitely not gone anywhere else. We did a lot of extensive scans to make sure, so we're going to wait and do a breast MRI again in a couple of months.
Speaker 1:Very good. So you kept your breasts, and so you are moving through this with your original breasts.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes. And when this most recent recurrence happened, I'm three years in and I was like, is it time? Can we consider, you know, just doing a delmastectomy where it's confined right now? And my oncologist was open to meeting with the surgeon and we all discussed it and the tumor board discussed it. Ultimately, it's so risky for me to go off of chemo for the length of time that I'd have to recover from a mastectomy and I'd want to do reconstruction that it's more dangerous than cancer in my breast right now. So, taking a beat on that, I don't know many people with metastatic breast cancer currently who have been doing surgeries, but I know some who have and been really happy with that too. So I definitely always keep it as a tool in our toolbox if we have to use it. But unfortunately, with the fact that it had already spread beyond medically, they're not seeing a scientific reason for it to make sense.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes sense and it's really cool. It sounds like you have a really good team to be working on this, you know, and people looking on the tumor board, and that's good to know. I wanted to ask you one question that we didn't discuss before, but how is your husband with this, and your daughter for that matter?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, so my husband's amazing. When I first got diagnosed and we went in, we already knew that I had it in my breast and my lymph nodes and then we didn't know yet about the results of the PET scan. So we went into that appointment. When they showed us the PET scan, that was like my husband hyperventilating into a paper bag moment and it was really that moment where that was happening. I was just trying to get whatever answers I could. I was being handed this packet of resources and that was a big part of what kind of inspired me of like there has to be a better way to figure out what it is that we need and how to get help. It was after that appointment where my husband and I had a discussion where I was like I need you to have all the feelings that you have and go through that. I just know that I can't have those with me. Like I need to be able to. Also, you know I can't be taking care of you while I'm taking care of me, and that was the only time that that happened and ever since then we've been such an amazing team. I'm so grateful for him.
Speaker 2:Our circumstance within this cancer world has changed so much throughout the past three years and it's going to continue to change for many years to come. And so I'm lucky that I have a good teammate on my side With my daughter. We never hid from her that I was sick or had cancer. I've used the word cancer around her, but she was so young that we never had explicitly explained what cancer was. So we actually just did that this past weekend and it was really great. We did a couple books. There's one called the Dot Method that was created by Kelsey Mora. That was really great.
Speaker 2:We did a couple books there's one called the Dot Method that was created by Kelsey Mora. That was really great. And then this other book that my friend sent out that was called Cancer Hates Kisses, oh, yeah, okay. And the whole book's about like the things that cancer hates that we have to keep doing, and it really stuck with her. So, like this morning, I went to the gym early before she left for school and when I came back she was like mommy, mommy, daddy said that cancer hates when you work out. And I was like, yeah, cancer hates it when I'm healthy, I love it, yeah. And then she ran over and gave me a ton of kisses. She's like it hates this too. It's been really a big release being very direct about it which I only have 24 hours to speak on, but I feel really good about it.
Speaker 1:You know, I would love to be able to put those links to those books in our show notes so that people can order those books, because I think it's such a great resource for people. And you know, you bring up that day that you were handed the big packet of resources. I remember getting that big packet and I swear I don't even think I ever even looked in it. And even I finally was given a nurse navigator where I had to kind of weed through and figure out questions to ask her what I was needing. But it's so overwhelming for both the person who is diagnosed and their caregiver. It's just overwhelming. And so I love that there are people like you who are trying to find a better way to be able to, I guess, give that information or any kind of resource, whether it be reading something or something physical. And, by the way, I'm so glad that you and your husband are a great team, because that doesn't happen all the time. I just really love when caregivers listen to this podcast because it's so important.
Speaker 1:You brought something up about your husband. It's really important for him to be able to move through his emotions and my husband and I also had those conversations and we have been seeing a therapist ever since. It's been about a year and a half since we've been seeing one and it's helped us tremendously. Because it's happening to the family and it's hard for them to really truly understand what we're going through. But having someone having a strong marriage like that, it's very telling when a couple can stay together and move forward and through with it. So I really wish that for everyone else. Let's talk about we got thisorg, because that is again something that I was so drawn to. I want to know how that happened and you have a team that goes along with this as well. Tell us all the things, alyssa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, we got thisorg is my life's mission and it was the gap that I saw in cancer care and when I was diagnosed, when everyone asking how they could help and what they could do and that was so easy with baby and wedding registries and it was really complicated in this hard time One, I had no idea what I needed and then also, I really didn't want to ask for help. When everyone texted it was just like just you texting and reaching out means the world to me and I didn't really want to ask much beyond that. So coming up with this idea, it was the fifth round of chemo, my initial chemo when I was on TCHP, and I wasn't feeling well. I was in those period of time when I had no taste and I couldn't get out of bed and those things and I just was like there needs to be something else for me to work on right now and I started thinking about that problem that I wanted to solve and I've always been very entrepreneurial. I went to school for entrepreneurship and you always start with what's the problem, and that was the problem to me, and so I started researching a lot because I wanted to make sure if anything existed like it any other nonprofits then I would just volunteer and help them and see what I could do and use it. Yeah, but nothing did. Nothing existed like it. I started making some calls to other friends that I went to Babson College with and other entrepreneurial tech minds because I'm not from the tech space at all my background is all financial services and just started coming up with much smaller scale, like helping people locally in LA with breast cancer, getting what they need. I was like I feel like I could figure out I can help a bunch of people. We could do that right away. It'd be great.
Speaker 2:And as I started talking more and more, this idea of it being a whole platform and being a gift registry like BabyList or Zola or something else came to light and I wasn't sure if that was something I could really do. So I had a lot of friends encouraging me to start a GoFundMe for the nonprofit, because I never wanted to do one for myself, which there's nothing wrong with doing. I just didn't feel like I fit anywhere with what was happening and so I started the GoFundMe and that's when I really felt like I had this passion and this thing that I knew I needed to bring to life. And initially I was going to do the GoFundMe for like $10,000 or $20,000. And a bunch of friends were like that's not enough money to do what you're trying to do. If you really want to do an open source registry, you're going to need at least six figures to do this. And I was like I can't fail right now If I ask for $100,000 and I get $30,000, that's amazing. That's more than I even initially thought. So I don't want to do that and then set myself up for failure and it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:And so a friend of mine helped me do the video for the GoFundMe. I talked it through, I started putting together some theoretical budgets and what it would take and the 5-1-C-3 and all these elements and I just went for it and I did the 100,000. Yeah, one friend and I'm going to credit my friend, brian Packer he said when I said I'm thinking 10,000, he said I'm thinking you need to add a zero to that. And that's what I did and we raised in the GoFundMe 105,000. We've raised three quarters of a million cents in the past two and a half years, of a million cents in the past two and a half years.
Speaker 2:That has allowed us to do so much. We also have so much more we want to do and I know it sounds like such a tremendous amount of money, but for me I felt like that amount of money like research and all that is so important and alongside that I want to make sure we're also focusing on quality of life in the patient and, where some of these numbers are kind of a drop in the bucket for research, they're like hugely impactful for creating this whole community of giving and receiving. That I wanted to do that's nationwide and we're working on trying to push that out global. We've had a lot of requests in Canada, but the website itself was able to really get going right away no-transcript two and a half years as well, and then eventually getting to the point where starting to build this team that is kind of a new force. That makes me really excited about where we can take this next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's inspires me so much. You know, I'm thinking about my own nonprofit with Tesla's breasts and thinking about all the possibilities and collaboration with other nonprofits, and the fact that you raise that kind of money just tells you what the community wants and like they have that vested interest in helping other people. So when someone goes to the website, how does it work? What do they do? How do they know? Because, like with wedding and baby registries, we know like we're on there with our spouse or whatever, our fiance or whoever, and we are looking at things that we think that we might want to have and we choose things and we put it in the registry. How do breast cancer patients know what they need?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, so in terms of just logistically putting it in, it's exactly the same, and you don't have to only have breast cancer. It's for any type of cancer obviously directly connected to breast cancer. But this site is for everyone. That's why we got this, so not just the patient, but the caregivers too. I have some friends right now with some recurrences that are in their brain and it's preventing them from being able to do stuff, so their husband or their friend are helping. This is just like how you would on a GoFundMe or something else.
Speaker 2:Knowing what you need is a big part, and that's where we're really expanding our team and bandwidth right now, because I can't be the only one to suggest that right. What I want and need is totally different from someone else and, like we talked about, I mean, my needs for chemo might be totally different from someone's needs for a double mastectomy or a different kind of chemo. You know I'm hormone negatives. You know I'm not going through early menopause. There's so many other resources for that that I wouldn't even use or know about yet, so that's important. On the website we have a recommendations page and the recommendations are products and services. So those are things like getting your eyebrows microbladed was a big one for me to know about. Sleep again pillows is a great one if you're going through a mastectomy or surgery. That allows you to not have to roll over on your side and sleep comfortably Any of those kinds of ideas. And then the resources side are free resources, other nonprofits Just learned recently there's some clinical trials for cold capping.
Speaker 2:As we learn about these kinds of resources, we funnel them into that page. So our website is really three buckets and it's registries, recommendations and resources and those are the three things that we completely focus on so that when someone asks for support groups or financial funding or other things which at first I would really try to do it all myself If someone needed something, I would pull funding and try to do that, and I realized that I can't accomplish our mission and help everyone if I focus on that and end up using up all of our resources. So we've partnered so well with so many other nonprofits. That's my vibe before and during cancer. I'm such a collaborator and I love partnering and, you know, truly believe we're stronger together.
Speaker 2:A great example of that is our friend Janine. She was a registry recently featured on our Instagram. She had just finished breast cancer, treatment for breast cancer, and then got some news that she had new cancer in her thyroid and she thought she was going to get to go back to work and couldn't. So it was literally to the point where she couldn't pay next month's rent point where she couldn't pay next month's rent. And we reached out to a great nonprofit here in LA called the Change Reaction. We explained her need and we had met them just through our networks of bringing in as many resources as we can. Within a couple days they got her a check out for her rent. Love it, pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things that I'm working on I'm still in the working stages of everything is to be able to have that resource page that's being built.
Speaker 1:My website is a lot of it's done but the resource page itself so, for example, under one of the categories that I'll have on resources will be wegotthisorg, so that people know where to go to to have this registry registry and anyone and, like you, just because mine's called test those breasts, most people with other cancers can go to my website and still be able to use resources in there.
Speaker 1:So it sounds very similar where I could have you on the resource page and I'll even have a category where it'll have books and podcasts so that people can be directed to different things that they can listen to or read. Wow, and I love the fact that you have a recommendation page, because before cancer I was like I wouldn't even know what to even put on the registry. So to have those recommendations and that you open it up to obviously anyone with cancer is just phenomenal. I love it. I'm so inspired by this and I'm so glad that you were able to do the research and make sure that there was no one else doing that and even if there was, you had a plan to be able to help volunteer for that, because what a great idea.
Speaker 2:And there's certain things that do need to overlap. I think it's so important that all nonprofits have the resource pages because you don't know where the patients, survivors, driver caregivers, you don't know where they're going to end up, and so you know we're a resource on so many other nonprofits websites and they're a resource on ours, and I think that you, just like with what you're saying, with yours, you never know where people are going to find you, and it's just. We just want people to have what they need is the goal. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, not all resources are going to resonate with every single person, but it's nice to be able to have that sort of buffet of just resources for people to pick and choose from it according to what is helpful to them. That was another thing too is that I envision having the funds to be able, so that people can apply for funds for people who need to pay their rent, their mortgage or whatever, put food on the table, and I want to be able to award people with a bag of money, you know, once a month, twice a month, whatever it takes. So we'll have to see where that goes. But it is a lot of work, alyssa, you know. I mean, sometimes some people have a control thing where they want to work on everything and it does just sort of thin out your efforts, like it's so hard.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of work that goes behind what you do, and I only know this. I'm on a smaller level than you are and I already know how much work it takes to put into do these podcasts and build, apply for a 501c3 and ask for donations and things like that, and get somebody to do a website and get people to edit my podcast. It's just, it takes a lot of work, so I am very, very grateful for what you have out there and I'm just so happy that you interviewed with me. I think hopefully we can get people to go to your website. We're going to have that in the show notes. I would like to ask you I always ask this is there any kind of piece of advice that you can give to people who've never been diagnosed with cancer?
Speaker 2:So people who don't have cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the reason I ask this.
Speaker 1:I do this every time because I find it a very fascinating question and the answers that I get.
Speaker 1:Before I had been diagnosed, I knew a lot about breast cancer, but I didn't know a lot about breast cancer, and so when I was diagnosed, I was so overwhelmed with stuff that I'm like holy cow. It never even occurred to me, and when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, breast cancer, any cancer, was not even on my radar, and so I really feel like it should be on people's radar, not to scare them. Not to scare them, but to be more aware of what's going on with their bodies and, you know, being able to advocate for themselves if they're feeling something that's not right. Being able to advocate for themselves. And so when I do these podcasts, sometimes I think that I'm preaching to the choir or people are to the choir right To people who have had cancer or have cancer now. We need to reach people that have never had it so they understand what to look for, they understand what kind of steps they can take if they are diagnosed. So I like to always ask that question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. So the biggest things that I always say is that we're all different. We're like a fingerprint. I still don't know everything about breast cancer and I feel like I know quite a bit, you know in the past couple of years, but it's super rare to meet someone else with your exact scenario of cancer. We're all so different. I think that the metastatic community, especially people, get really scared. That can be. The biggest fear of people is that it comes back metastatic and the biggest fear of someone without cancer is that they get cancer and rather than being afraid of us or becoming like us, I think that really embracing what's there.
Speaker 2:I have stage four breast cancer. I've had tumors throughout my body and in my brain and I am living each day very fully. I was just boxing this morning, I went golfing yesterday. I have some really hard days too and it's tough and my life looks totally different now. But I'm living with it and there's a lot of treatments out there to live with it in the meantime of curing it, and I really hope that. I think there has been a good, you know, resurgence even since I've been in the metastatic community, but I really hope that that continues, because everything is important.
Speaker 2:Prevention is important, treating it is important, like it's all important and I think that it gets skewed sometimes because of a lot of times that people who don't have cancer have these preconceived notions and they don't quite understand. Like, when I tell someone right now that I have cancer, they're very confused. So I always immediately am like well, the chemo I'm currently on doesn't make me lose my hair, but I've been on nonstop chemo for three years. I just think it's really important to focus on that. I think it's also important to me that we're all different. So while some people might love blankets or candles or coloring books, we're not all the same and that's why I think the gift registry is so important too.
Speaker 2:When I had my daughter, everyone uses diapers, but or not everyone. I shouldn't even say that Some people use diapers, some people use cloth diapers, some people don't use diapers at all. Like there are so many elements to who we are and that shouldn't change when we're diagnosed with cancer. We should still be treated like individuals. The bar shouldn't be set lower for us. Like we're still humans and we're here and we deserve to be treated as such. So I hope that when people see that, they don't get scared. I hope that they don't get cancer, but in the case that they do, I hope that embracing our cancer community as a whole can help them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great advice. Great advice. My friend, natalie Stevenson, here with Cancer Community Clubhouse it's a nonprofit here in town and she started that and she's got metastatic cancer and she told me you know, I've heard her speak in front of people too. It's like we have these two different worlds. We have a world where sometimes we are not doing okay, like right over here, right, because we have metastatic breast cancer or whatever cancer, and then we have another world where we are living with it. We have a full life, we go out, we socialize, we do the things that we can do, and we can have those two worlds exist at the same time, and I thought that was really interesting, such a really interesting perspective.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, alyssa, this has been so amazing and I cannot wait to put you on my resource page. And the next time I because we hear about people being diagnosed all the time I really want to share that website with them so that they can be able to get into that registry and use that to the best of their ability to help them with their journey. So thank you so much. I appreciate everything you have shared with us today. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we disconnect?
Speaker 2:The biggest thing that I've been saying a lot is during that period of time when I was on Inher2, which, again, is a great miracle drug and helped me so much and all of us are different in our reactions it was really hard for me to live on and it was the first time when I really had to take a look at my life and say can I live this way?
Speaker 2:And the answer was no and I made a change. It really ingrained in my mind that we don't have to endure suffering to prove our resilience and we don't have to suffer through things to be tough, to be survivors or thrivers and all that, which are words that are great and really resonate with me. But you need to identify with what it means to you and we don't need to set the bar lower because we have cancer. We need to really meet ourselves where we're at and if there's something that can make you feel better or help you out, and if people ask if they can help, let them Try to find those things and these resources. And I know it's hard. I know it's hard to advocate for yourself. I've been through multiple medical teams before finding the right one, but they're there and it's pretty amazing what the breast cancer community does on all ends, from research to support and all the great things you're saying and the people you interview and do, and so my biggest advice is to prioritize living, because we all deserve to live.
Speaker 1:I love that, such a great piece of advice, and I even love it for myself now because you know I am a survivor. But I do think to myself, you know, am I going to get it again? And it happens all the time. So I have to kind of not dwell on it but at the same time know that I can make it through and I've got the resources to help me. So thank you very much, alyssa. I appreciate it again and to my audience, thank you again for joining me on this episode of Test those Breasts and on your favorite platform. Again, I'd really appreciate if you can rate and review. It does help and we will see you next time, on the next episode of Test those Breasts. Bye for now, Friends.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Test those Breasts. I hope you got some great, much needed information that will help you with your journey. As always, I am open to guests to add value to my show and I'm also open to being a guest on other podcasts where I can add value. So please reach out if you'd like to collaborate. My contact information is in the show notes and, as a reminder, rating, reviewing and sharing this podcast will truly help build a bigger audience all over the world. I thank you for your efforts. I look forward to sharing my next episode of Test those Breasts.
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