Introduction

Where to begin. This is the first time I have done something like this. I wish I wasn't doing it now, but this seems the best way to communicate with everyone. My name is Angie and I am a 28 year old married woman from Milwaukee. I have been pretty healthy my entire life. That all changed on June 7, 2008 when I got a call from my doctor that some tests she had run came back as being positive for something called Inflammatory Breast Cancer, the rarest form of breast cancer there is. Only 1% of women diagnosed with breast cancer are diagnosed with IBC.

This all began about nine months ago while I was studying for my LSAT. For those of you who don't know the LSAT is a test that is needed for anyone to apply to law school. My plan was to take the LSAT, go to school and become a lawyer, have children and live happily ever after. Never in my dream did I foresee myself walking down that road with breast cancer. In September of 2007 as I was studying for my test, I remembered getting a sharp stabbing pain in my left breast. I figured it was just the stress of the test and ignored it. A couple of months later, while doing a self exam, I found a lump. I am a very large chested woman, so thinking that it was just fatty tissue, I did nothing about the lump. Recently, my breast became more swollen and about three weeks ago, it became very red and hot to the touch. Heeding my friends and parents advice, I made an appointment with a doctor at my family practice office. My normal doctor was unavailable as she works only three days a week, so I was forced to see another doctor. That doctor, ordered and ultrasound and put me on some antibiotics, because someone as young as me was too young to have breast cancer. A couple days later, I had the ultrasound - but nothing was found. The radiologist came in to the room and said that he thought I had a really bad infection because again, I was too young to have breast cancer. The next day, I went back to my doctor because of some headaches I was having, this time my mother came in from out of town to go with me. She forced the doctor to send me to a surgeon for a second opinion on my lump. In doing research on IBC, I found that my symptoms and the symptoms of IBC were extremely similar - so obviously we didn't want to wait around for two weeks to test the antibiotics he wanted to try. So we got a referral for a surgeon and when my mother asked the doctor if she was a specialist in breast issues, he said "well she is a woman, and she is a surgeon". Like that means anything at all??? Luckily, the doctor he sent me to see was to busy so her partner called me the next day and got me in to see her a week earlier than my scheduled appointment.