Kristen Dahlgren's Stage 2 Breast Cancer Diaggnosis
- NBC News correspondent Kristen Dahlgren was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer at 47 years old, just months after having a mammogram that was negative.
- She went to get checked in the midst of covering a hurricane in North Carolina because she had noticed a “slight dent” in her right breast and some “thickening.”
- Dahlgren received her cancer diagnosis just days after having a mammogram and ultrasound done.
- She admits she might have missed a major sign of the disease if she hadn’t learned about symptoms when reporting another story at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on breast cancer symptoms.
- Being aware of how your breasts normally look and feel is an important factor when it comes to breast cancer detection. Doing regular self-exams is one way to familiarize yourself with how your breasts normally feel so that you will be able to identify anything out of the ordinary like a lump or hard mass.
She was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer at 47 years old while on assignment.
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“The next day I was sent to cover a hurricane along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It would have been easy to put my own health aside and focus on work. My husband, however, wouldn’t let me…”
While reporting on the hurricane, she got a prescription for a breast screening. And in between live shots, Dahlgren was able to get checked at a local hospital.
“With people evacuating in advance of the storm, they had an opening for a mammogram and ultrasound,” she added, recounting that when questioned by the nurse why she couldn’t just wait to get checked at home, she said, “I just need to know.”
She received her cancer diagnosis just days after the mammogram and ultrasound.
Dahlgren says another story she reported helped her spot her symptoms. She conducted a 2016 report at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on breast cancer symptoms.
She said Dr. Deborah Rhodes, an internist with Mayo Breast Diagnostic Clinic, told her, “It’s profoundly important to be aware of your breasts.”
“I remember thinking that the story would save lives,” Dahlgren said. “I had no idea the life it would save would be my own.”
Dahlgren – whose daughter was 3 years old when she received her diagnosis and whose stepson was undergoing cancer treatment at the time – ultimately celebrated being cancer-free in April 2020, after eight rounds of chemotherapy and 25 rounds of radiation.
“Not a day goes by that I don't worry about my cancer returning. As one doctor put it, ‘a headache is never just a headache, after cancer,'” she concluded. “Indeed, every ache and pain can bring anxiety that my cancer has returned, but I try not to dwell on the fear.”
When Should I Get a Mammogram?
Dahlgren ultimately underwent a double mastectomy (removal of both breasts) in January 2020, followed by three additional surgeries to reconstruct her breasts.
Symptoms of Breast Cancer
Being aware of how your breasts normally look and feel is an important factor when it comes to breast cancer detection, as Kristen Dahlgren showed.
Doing regular self-exams is one way to familiarize yourself with how your breasts normally feel so that you will be able to identify anything out of the ordinary like a lump or hard mass.
Getting To Know Your Breasts With Self-Exams
Below are some other symptoms to look out for:
- New lump in the breast or underarm (armpit)
- Any change in the size or shape of the breast
- Swelling on all or part of the breast
- Skin dimpling or peeling
- Breast or nipple pain
- Nipple turning inward
- Redness or scaliness of breast or nipple skin
- Nipple discharge (not associated with breastfeeding)
Of course, these symptoms can be due to things other than cancer. For example, a lot of women experience breast tenderness during certain times in their menstrual cycles. If you're worried talk to your doctor about it. They may want to perform an exam, or even schedule a mammogram just to be safe.
What Is Stage 2 Breast Cancer?
To better understand Kristen Dahlgren’s cancer, it's important to talk about what ‘stage’ means for breast cancer patients.
“Stage really refers to how big a tumor is and how many lymph nodes are involved,” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, previously told SurvivorNet.
What Is Stage 2 Breast Cancer?
“When a woman has stage 2 breast cancer, it means that the tumor's probably bigger than 2 cm and/or she has lymph nodes involved,” Dr. Comen explained.
“And if she has lymph nodes involved, she probably doesn't have that many lymph nodes involved. Because if you have more lymph nodes, like 10, 11, 12, then that might be referred to as Stage 3 cancer.”
Treating Stage 2 Breast Cancer
There are many treatment options for people with breast cancer, but treatment depends greatly on the specifics of each case. The stage is just one of the defining characteristics that can be used to help determine the treatment path.
“Patients come to me all the time asking, 'What is the stage of my cancer?'” Dr. Comen said. “Stage is kind of an old way of thinking about how we treat breast cancer. But, yet, it is still one of the ways that we put patients into categories to figure out the types of treatments that may be available to them.”
Thanks to advancements in cancer research, today's treatment options depend on much more than just stage. Doctors also consider the hormones, biology, and genetics involved with each case to determine the best course of treatment.
“When it comes to deciding the type of treatment that a woman needs, it's not just the size of the tumor and how many lymph nodes are involved and the stage,” she explained.
“It's really also the biology. Is it hormone receptor positive? Is this a cancer that we probably need chemotherapy for? Or maybe we don't need chemotherapy for.”
In other words, it's not just the stage that's going to “drive your cancer,” according to Dr. Comen. And figuring out the other factors that will “drive” it is what's really going to help your oncologist pick the most beneficial treatments for you. Identifying these specifics means looking into whether the cancerous cells have certain receptors.
These receptors the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and the HER2 receptor can help identify the unique features of the cancer and help personalize treatment.
Dr. Comen told SurvivorNet, “These receptors, I like to imagine them like little hands on the outside of the cell, they can grab hold of what we call ligands, and these ligands are essentially the hormones that may be circulating in the bloodstream that can then be pulled into this cancer cell and used as a fertilizer, as growth support for the cells.”
MORE: The Unique Features of Breast Cancer: Deciding the Right Course of Treatment
One example of a type of ligand that can stimulate a cancer cell is the hormone estrogen, hence why an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer will grow when stimulated by estrogen. For these cases, your doctor may offer treatment that specifically targets the estrogen receptor. But for HER2 positive breast cancers, therapies that uniquely target the HER2 receptor may be the most beneficial.
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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