It was finally time for Calandra, a wife and mom of two, to start taking care of herself again. For two years, Calandra cared and then mourned for her mother who passed away from anaplastic thyroid cancer and was her brother’s health care proxy during the planning of his heart transplant. Then she found a small lump on her breast. "As much as I wanted it to be a mosquito bite, I knew it was going to be more," said Calandra.
First, she went in for a mammogram and then a biopsy. Next, her voicemail filled up with messages to appointments from many different doctors. Quickly, she checked her patient portal and saw she had tested positive for invasive ductal carcinoma. For three and a half hours, she waited for her own doctor to call and give her the results over the phone. The entire time, she thought she was going to die.