SUPPORT AND RESOURCES

My name is Juanita. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, and I am a metastatic breast cancer patient.

When I think about who I am, the first thing I think of is being a mother.

I have a 10-year-old boy and two adult children.

Before I got my diagnosis, I knew something was wrong because I felt a lump in my breast. I was getting dressed and getting showered and I felt it.

I went on a few days later to have a mammogram and an ultrasound, and as soon as I saw the radiologist's face when she came back in, I knew something was going on.

And then we had more tests and more tests, and we got to the final diagnosis of stage four breast cancer.

When you hear stage four, you hear "This is not good."

When I was told that my breast cancer was HER2-positive, I didn't really know what that meant. So I did start to do research and learn about it.

Once I accepted it, it put me in a space of learning.

I was able to give myself the space to learn about the disease, to make sure I knew that I was getting the care that I needed. But I still wasn't able to give myself the care that I needed mentally and emotionally, until I connected with social support services. And that helped me to give myself the empathy and grace and gentleness that I needed, you know, to get through this every day.

My head was actually in a place where I'm going to die. But I got to know people who have been living with this and who knew so much and who were encouraging and uplifting.

When I learned about ENHERTU, and I started it, I became more motivated to take better care of myself.

I've tried a lot of different things to keep my body going and stronger. One of the things that I've tried is water aerobics. I have a great instructor and he makes it fun.

My advice for someone who is just starting ENHERTU would be, plan around your treatments. You plan meal prep around treatments, you plan grocery shopping around treatments. You plan hairdo, hairstyles, everything—you plan around your treatments. And that's hard to get used to in the beginning, too.

It's about managing how you feel. I take small naps all day long. That makes me ready for the evening, and I'm ready to go.

It affects everybody differently. I would tell another woman to talk to their doctor about what specific side effects they may have with ENHERTU, and what will be our plan to manage these side effects.

Have your questions prepared. The more that you know, the more confident you are in having conversations with your doctor.

During the pandemic, women of color, and just women in general, were able to connect in a different way than they ever had been before.

We connected just in support groups, talking to each other. We connected on cooking classes, blanket-making classes—all kinds of things.

I realized that sharing education with other women—and social support resources—became really important for me. So I began to share that with other women in any way that I could.

I want everybody to know how to speak up for themselves, and that they need to educate themselves about what's going on with them. Because it gives you a peace of mind to have a voice in what's going on.

And I didn't know that in the beginning. It took me a while to get to that place. It makes me lean on being stronger and braver and more confident than I've ever been. To be more present for myself. To live every day the best that I can.