Six weeks changed everything.

My story started like anyone else's. I felt a lump, I went to the doctor, the doctor wasn't concerned, so I wasn't either. We scheduled a precautionary mammogram, but we were both laughing when he walked out of the room and said, “C'mon, 30 year olds don't get cancer.” When the clinic called me later that afternoon with an appointment that was 6 weeks away, I put it on my calendar and went on with my day. Then, the lump got bigger.

Just one week later, I could tell a difference, so I called the clinic and tried to move my appointment up. There was nothing available. Then I called other clinics. They didn't have anything earlier than my current appointment. The lump got bigger.

I went back to my doctor two weeks after my initial appointment. During the exam, the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. He said he would put in another order for a mammogram, but this one would indicate that this was URGENT. When I never got a call for an earlier appointment, I called them. They said that urgent or not, they had no earlier appointments. So I called the other clinics. Same response. The lump got bigger.

I began calling every clinic in a 150 mile radius every other day, asking about cancellations. I never got an earlier appointment. The day I finally got my mammogram, the nurse got quiet when she saw how much pain I was in and escorted me to get an ultrasound immediately after. The ultrasound tech was friendly when I walked in the room, then she grew silent too. While I got an ultrasound, the clinic called a radiologist from a nearby hospital to read my results before I left the ultrasound room.

Two days later, an oncologist diagnosed me with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, the most rare and fast moving form of breast cancer. I was ER/PR-, and 100% HER2+, which doubled the rate at which the cancer was spreading. I started a hyper-aggressive chemotherapy within 7 days.

All of the clinics who got annoyed with me for calling and asking about cancellations almost cost me my life. What they did give me, was clarity: being a “good patient” is often for the requestor's comfort, not what is in the patient's best interest. They couldn't see and feel what I saw and felt. Somewhere between diagnosis and treatment, I stopped apologizing for asking questions.

The Big B Word is named for the diagnosis that was so hard for me to admit was my new reality. I wanted a place that doesn't flinch or cower from it — that holds hope and grief in the same hand, and offers tools that I didn't have: questions to ask, where to find reliable information, and how to advocate for yourself when a system is moving slower than your body will allow.

This is also where the “by Jaycee” shop will live. Small, honest things made for patients living inside a diagnosis, and the people caring for those patients.

If any part of my story sounds like yours, you are not alone here, and you're not too much. I see you, believe you, and want to fight for you.

— Jaycee