Patient Stories – Jesse

“I felt so loved going through this.”

“I did not discover my lump,” says Jesse.  “In fact, there wasn’t actually a lump to discover.  I routinely,  every year, got a mammogram.”

Then Jesse got a phone call from her doctor.  “I’m sorry to tell you this,” her doctor said, “It’s cancer.”

I Knew He Was Devastated
“I got off the phone and I thought, I’ve got to call Mackenzie.  And I knew he’d be much more worried and actually upset than I was,” says Jesse. “He was very encouraging and wonderful and ‘we’ll get through it,’ he said. “I knew he was devastated.”

“This bomb just landed on us out of the blue,” says Jesse’s husband MacKenzie.

A Tremendous Assault on The Body
Jesse’s breast cancer diagnosis, subsequent bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery were a “tremendous assault on the body for months,” she says. “It was like the world just fell in on me,” adds MacKenzie.  “It was just impossible to realize this was actually happening.”

It Became Our Illness
But MacKenzie was very supportive of Jesse.  “He went to every single appointment with me. He listened to everything.  He heard things that I didn’t hear…”  MacKenzie adds, “As this thing developed, it just became our illness.”

He Was The Soul of Patience
Jesse is very appreciative of her husband’s support. “If I had not had a partner who was able to pick up the slack, I don’t know what I would have done. It made a huge difference for me because I could just concentrate on what I needed to do to get myself ready to deal with what was coming.”

“He just was the soul of patience and anybody who knows my husband, knows he is not the soul of patience. But he was with me,” says Jesse.

We Made Decisions Based on What Was Right For Us
Jesse believes that it’s important for couples going through cancer treatment to make decisions based on what’s right for them. “I think it is vital for people and for couples — whether it is a husband and wife or whether it’s boyfriend-girlfriend, girlfriend-girlfriend, mother-daughter, whoever, when they are going through this — number one – it’s your process.  Other people can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing.  We made decisions based on what was right for us.”

I Felt Loved
“I felt so loved going through this,” says Jesse.  “MacKenzie gave me hope that I would get beyond what we were going through.  I am confident that getting screened made a huge difference.”

“It made all the difference in the world,” adds MacKenzie.

The Difference.