Erica’s Story
"Scars are a reminder not to dwell on what has happened that gave them to me but on what I am going to do going forward."
Erica was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, but it was not her first experience with the disease. She had already faced cancer of a different variety nearly two decades prior.
“In 2001, when I was just shy of 20, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in June, right after my sophomore year of college.”
This self-described “first rodeo” with cancer came at a time when Erica had only her own future to worry about.
“I was someone else’s child at the time. I didn’t have anything to worry about. I was worried that my timeline for my education might be pushed back and that it would affect my ability to have children down the road.”
Her team reassured her that she was unlikely to have any issues with kids. However, the mantle radiation therapy used in her treatment did come with another, serious secondary concern: she would be at an increased risk of developing breast cancer 20 years later. While it felt far away at the time, it was still difficult information for her to process.
Erica responded to treatment and built a life. She became a teacher, got married, had two children, and kept up with her breast cancer surveillance along the way. Nineteen years later, her team’s old warning came to roost in the midst of a global pandemic.
“That year was a storm of uncertainty. Between trying to manage my own kids’ remote learning, my remote teaching, and a world full of uncertainty, there was a lot of anxiety. I went in for my screening. I don’t know what made me go in the middle of a pandemic, when people were avoiding doctors’ offices, but I went for a breast MRI, and the tech was asking too many questions. I left with a feeling that she had seen something.”
Erica was unsurprised by the call she received from her oncologist. A biopsy confirmed that she had breast cancer. Proactive screening meant that she was able to catch it early, which offered her an excellent prognosis. She had her first surgical consultation on her second son’s sixth birthday. Her older son was ten.
“My first time around, I was someone’s child. My second time around, I was so much more. I was a mother, a wife. It was still a storm of uncertainty. It’s uncertain for you as a patient with all of the choices to be made. I was fortunate that my diagnosis was not grave. It was a very small tumor. Most other women would likely have had a choice to have a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. I had already maxed out all the radiation I could have to my chest treating Lymphoma. That’s why I was in the situation I was in.”
Erica’s past experience not only narrowed her surgical oncology options, it also informed her approach to her breast reconstruction options. She was familiar with implant based breast reconstruction. Her research indicated that amid many implant success stories, there were patients who experienced complications and illness as a result of their breast implants. Unwilling to undertake that risk, she decided implant reconstruction was not for her.
“In my mind, I was going flat. I wanted to reduce my chances of having to deal with this down the road. I knew right away it was going to be a double mastectomy, and then I was going to go flat. Then I found out about the whole world of flap reconstruction.”
Erica was referred to a plastic surgeon who performed the full range of breast reconstruction procedures, including natural tissue flap reconstruction. She worked with him to choose DIEP flap breast reconstruction, which avoided the use of a foreign body, worked well with her natural build, and had a high success rate amongst patients who had prior radiation therapy.
“There’s a lot of education that has to be done; it’s not something you know until you unfortunately have to know. One of the most important things I learned along the way is that having a team that prepares you, that you’re confident in makes all the difference. You have most likely never been through this before or you hope that you’re only going to go through this once.”
Erica underwent bilateral mastectomies with DIEP flap breast reconstruction in August of 2020. While she had had cancer before, this experience was different. Her family was not allowed in the hospital because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her first concern in the moments after her surgery was her family. She recovered well. Now, she sees her scars not as simply reminders of the past, but as calls to action for the future.
“Every morning I wake up, and there are reminders. I get in the shower, every morning I see scars. I see scars from lymphoma. I see scars from mastectomies. I see scars from C-sections. Scars are a reminder not to dwell on what has happened that gave them to me but on what I am going to do going forward. It’s very easy to be pessimistic, but I try to flip that negativity that could be associated with a scar into something more positive. The scars are a badge of accomplishment.”
She said that mindset has allowed her to look upon each day and milestone with a special kind of pride and gratitude. At the time of this interview, Erica had just reached one such milestone. In August 2025, she celebrated five years without breast cancer.
“I’m in my five year window right now, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do to honor that five year mark. I saw the call for stories, and I said, ‘this is what I’m going to do.’”