I've come a LONG way since this picture was taken! I was diagnosed July 20th, 2000 with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer when my neck collapsed. Yes, you read that right. MY NECK COLLAPSED. I had been having pains throughout my body for about 6 months and none of the doctors I saw or tests I had could figure out what was going on. The pain started in my lower back, then was in my ribs, my right shoulder area, and finally in my neck. At first I thought it was a whiplash flare-up from a couple of accidents I'd been in but I soon was in excruciating pain, flat on my back in bed. I could barely get out of bed to go to the washroom or to eat. The only way I could get rid of the neck pain was to lay flat on my back (very still) or to tilt my head way back. I asked my doctor for a neck x-ray after seeing 2 other doctors at the practice (who prescribed me Tylenol 3 with Codeine) and he agreed and said if that didn't show anything he'd send me to some kind of specialist (I can't remember which kind, but they would have found out the problem). I went for the neck x-ray next door, and went back home to bed. The next day my doctor called and told me I had a collapsed vertebra in my neck and that I needed to get to one of our local emergency rooms where a specific doctor was waiting for me. I called my husband who came home from work and took me to the hospital where they did every test conceivable. The next morning the doctor came into my room and asked my husband and mother to leave so she could perform an "exam". When they left she told me she needed to do a breast exam. I said "I came in here with a SORE NECK and you want to do a BREAST exam? What can those two things possibly have in common??!!". It was then that she told me I had breast cancer that had spread throughout my body. It was through my entire spine (from my neck right down to the sacral area), in numerous ribs, my chest wall, my liver, and the "shoulder" pain was a tumour that broke my right first rib totally apart. The lump in my breast was growing inward toward the chest wall and was undetectable to the doctors hands, but the CT scan showed it was there. To say that I was in shock when I heard this diagnosis would be a major understatement. It just didn't compute in my brain! I came in with a sore neck and they're telling me I have BREAST CANCER?! I was taken by ambulance (very carefully!) to another hospital where neurosurgery & cancer specialists would take over my care. I was put in a halo to stabilize my neck. The collapsed vertebra was millimetres away from my spinal cord and needed to be immobilized. I then had surgery to remove that vertebra and as much of the cancer as they could safely remove from my neck. The surgical team took a bone graft from one of my hips, they sculpted it, and put it in place of the vertebra that was removed. Next, a titanium plate was screwed to the vertebra above & below to stabilize my neck further. They left the halo on & I lived with that thing for three months. After the neck surgery another team of surgeons removed the lump from my breast to learn all the characteristics of the cancer. Pathology showed I was ER+ and strongly Her2+. I learned these results 8 weeks after my initial diagnosis when I met with an oncologist. The graft in my neck needed time to heal before I could undergo any treatment. My first treatment was radiation to my spine for a partially collapsed vertebra, and radiation to my neck for the cancer that couldn't be removed during surgery. When I met with a medical oncologist we learned the cancer had spread in the 8 weeks since my diagnosis. I then started chemotherapy, once a week for six months...with Herceptin as well. After the first three months the tumours had shrunk, and after the last three months they had not changed. My cancer was stable - not in remission, not cured, not gone - stable. This all happened back in July of 2000, almost TEN YEARS AGO. I have been getting Herceptin every three weeks for the last nine years and my cancer has remained stable. It's truly incredible and I am so thankful. I never thought I'd be thankful for an aggressive cancer that the minority of breast cancer patients have, but I am. We are lucky there is a drug to help us. Now there are other drugs as well for Her2+ breast cancer if Herceptin fails. I've lost friends who were Her2+ and I really hope that if these new drugs would have been available then, that they would still be here. There's just no way to know is there? When I was first diagnosed I was told the median survival rate for someone with breast cancer as widespread as mine was 2.5 years. Almost ten years later my cancer is still stable - I'm living proof research works! I'm thrilled to have been asked to be involved with this website, and with the documentary. It's important for other young women to know that you CAN live a good life with Stage four breast cancer, and that being diagnosed with this kind of cancer isn't as scary as it once was thanks to Herceptin.