Holly McCabe had been a nurse for 7 years when she started working in the oncology unit at St. Joseph in Denver. Helping cancer patients through their difficult experiences led her to go for a breast exam one evening after work. On August 27, she found a lump.
She immediately called the doctor and went for an examination three days later. “They ended up referring me for an ultrasound,” he tells PEOPLE exclusively. “And then when I got the ultrasound, they said, ‘Oh, wow, that looks worrisome. We need to do a mammogram.'”
Doctors took a biopsy of a lump in her right breast. The next day, as she was boarding a flight for her brother’s wedding, her radiologist called and confirmed that she had breast cancer. McCabe adds that no one in her immediate family has had breast cancer, so she was never considered high-risk.
A week later, she learned she had been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, which is more invasive than other types of breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. It accounts for about 10-15% of all breast cancers.
“It was all off to the races. That point was a complete whirlwind,” says McCabe. “I quickly met with the oncologist and the surgeon, and it just exploded from there.”
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At the end of September, McCabe began chemotherapy, which will last six months. On December 27, she will begin the second round, which lasts 12 weeks.
“It will end on February 28, and then I will need a double or bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction,” he adds. “Then I’ll need daily radiation.”
“After that — I think people often think you’re done — but there’s a maintenance phase of immunotherapy that you take for almost a year,” she continues, adding that the road ahead could be quite long.
Holly McCabe was an ICU nurse and travel nurse for 7 years.
Holly McCabe
Since her diagnosis, McCabe has taken a leave of absence from work. Now she uses her free time to share her story on social media.
“A day in my life battling cancer at 30,” she captioned a recent TikTok video. In another video, McCabe takes her followers on a journey with her to get her labs done, asking followers to pray for better results.
“I’m paying a lot of attention to my liver this week,” he wrote on TikTok.
Being able to share her story helped her connect with people around the world with similar experiences. She says, “There seem to be a lot of young women who struggle with this. I didn’t realize that until I had it, and I think it’s important to share that, too. That’s a lot of young women.”
“I fear for my own life, and at 30, that’s not something I thought I’d ever say,” she continues.
“I wanted to share my story because I found my lump by accident as a woman living her life. I just thought I could potentially do this for someone. And if I can’t do that, then I can make someone feel better about their day or make to make them feel less alone,” she adds.
As McCabe looks ahead to her treatment and her future, she says, the hardest part is knowing the toll cancer is taking. After all, she had seen it in her patients.
“I think being a nurse put me in a complicated scenario. Having been through the pandemic in intensive care, I have a solid background and a pretty deep knowledge of what could go wrong and what the end of life would look like,” she said. he says.
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Holly McCabe is receiving chemotherapy after being diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.
Holly McCabe
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“I understand what it would look like if this cancer accidentally spread to my organs, which is not out of the question,” she continues. “It was hard because of the knowledge I have and how scary it is. And then losing control.”
She adds: “I love my job, I’m really lucky that I love my job and I love helping others. And now I’m somehow deprived of that control and that honor and I was simply a patient where you don’t have any control and you go through it. And I hope I think it will make me a better nurse in the future and I’ve been given that opportunity, but it’s a pretty tough situation.”
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Source: HIS Education