From Nurse to Patient: Young Mother Shares Her Breast Cancer Journey

WACO, Texas (FOX 44) — Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Texas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Medical experts say that makes early detection critical.

“Being able to detect breast cancer earlier can decrease the risk because most early-stage breast cancers can be surgically removed,” said Dr. Stella Amaechi, a medical oncologist with Baylor Scott & White. “Once the disease is more advanced, it’s harder to pursue curative treatment options.”

While national guidelines recommend women begin routine screenings at age 40, some cases appear earlier. For Aysha Brown, a 33-year-old wife, mother, and nurse, the diagnosis came as a shock.

“I found out earlier this year in February,I had a lump in my breast,” Brown said. She expressed that her youngest child is two years old, and she’d still been breastfeeding, which caused her to think the lump was a clogged milk duct. “But when I went to the doctor, it turned out to be cancer.”

Brown said her diagnosis forced her to pause her role of caring for others and focus on her own health.

“There came a point where I had to say, ‘It’s time for me to be taken care of, rather than me taking care of someone else,’” she said. “It was a big adjustment.”

She said her cancer was considered aggressive at stage three, and she was glad to go visit her doctor when she did.

“Very grateful and blessed, seven is a number of completion, so the number is perfect. I have seven members of my family. It’s seven…The storm that I went through was all worth it. At the end of the tunnel, there is light.”

She credits her husband Patrick, their five children, Montae, Mari, Lehgend, Kingston, and Lehgacy, along with her faith, for helping her through treatment. “A lot of praying along this journey, it allowed me to get closer to God, allowed my family to get closer to God.”

“Just yesterday, I saw my oncologist and she told me I was cancer-free,” Brown said. “It’s surreal. It’s a miracle.”

Now, Brown hopes her story reminds other women that breast cancer is not always a death sentence.

“You hear cancer and you think it’s a death sentence, but it’s not,” she said. “You can live, and you can still be the woman God wanted you to be,” she said. “You don’t have to be a statistic, but you could be a survivor in this. That’s what I went by,”