When Marcella Kelson noticed an odd thickening of tissue in her left breast two years ago, she didn’t panic. After all, she had just given birth to her second child, Francesca, four months earlier. It wasn’t surprising that her breast, engorged with milk, would feel different.
“I thought it was just a clogged milk duct, or maybe it had something to do with hormone changes,” she recalled.
Breast cancer seemed like a remote possibility. Marcella, then 35, was very health conscious and had no family history of the disease. At a checkup just a few months earlier, her doctor had told her risk of developing breast cancer was low. She had no reason to begin regular breast cancer screening sooner than age 40—the recommended start time for women at an average risk of the disease.
Marcella wasted no time making an appointment to get the area in her breast checked out.
In the span of just two days, she got an ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy. A short time later, the results came back: She had triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive subtype that disproportionately impacts younger women, has fewer treatment options, and has a higher rate of recurrence than other breast cancers.
Marcella was stunned—and terrified.
“You’re not supposed to birth a child and worry that you’ll die in the same year,” she said. “The level of fear the diagnosis triggered in me is something I never could have imagined.”
At the same time, she felt an odd sense of relief. Waiting for the results had been agonizing, but now that she had the diagnosis, she found some comfort knowing that she and her doctor would start making a treatment plan.
Thankfully, the cancer had been caught early and hadn’t spread beyond her breast. And there was another reason for Marcella to feel hopeful: About a year before, the FDA approved the first immunotherapy regimen for high-risk, early-stage TNBC based on results from the KEYNOTE-522 trial led by several BCRF investigators. It showed that in women with early-stage TNBC, the immunotherapy medication pembrolizumab (Keytruda®)—when combined with chemotherapy before surgery and taken alone following surgery—improved event-free survival better than chemotherapy alone.
The discovery was a major breakthrough for TNBC, which lacks many targeted treatments. And it meant everything to Marcella. The timing could not have been better.
“I would read the results of the KEYNOTE-522 trial obsessively as if it were my bible,” she said. “It made me feel a lot safer and a lot more optimistic.”
Still, treatment would be intense: 16 rounds of chemotherapy, 14 rounds of immunotherapy, a lumpectomy, and then 20 rounds of radiation. It was physically grueling, but Marcella found that the psychological effects of treatment were harder to bear.
“The anxiety of death and of not getting to see my kids grow up was by far the most challenging part of it,” she said. “Not to mention the time I lost with my kids: not being awake, being in treatment, not feeling well. You don’t get that time back. There’s grief in that loss too.”
Newborn Francesca was much too young to know what was happening, of course. But Marcella and her husband, Daniel, knew that their son Otto, then 3, would notice Mom wasn’t feeling well and have questions. Marcella, a maternal wellness expert and coach with a background in developmental psychology and psychotherapy, came up with an approach she felt was appropriate for his age and wasn’t too scary.
“I tried to give a more science-based explanation of what cancer cells are and how medication really does a great job of getting rid of them,” she said. “But the medication is strong, and so sometimes it makes me tired, or it can make my hair fall out, but that’s because it’s doing a really good job.”
And thankfully, it did. On April 3, 2023—two days before Francesca’s first birthday—she underwent a lumpectomy. Minutes after she awoke from surgery, the surgeon gave her the good news: Marcella was cancer-free.
“It was an amazing moment,” she said. “I felt safe again.”
While the return to normalcy was tough at first, Marcella is now doing well. Because TNBC has a high rate of recurrence, she undergoes frequent breast screenings, and she also sees a psychotherapist to help address the trauma and ongoing anxiety the experience triggered.
But she is also full of gratitude: for her family and friends’ support, for her medical team’s excellent care, for new relationships she made during her breast cancer journey, and for research.
“The breast cancer community is one of the most powerful groups of people you could ever imagine,” Marcella said. “Members come forward and are willing to share their stories so that you have better experiences and feel supported and cared for. We all just want to improve the experience for patients that are coming after us in our own small ways.”
For her, that means supporting the kind of groundbreaking research that allowed her to thrive today. For her 36th birthday, she created a fundraiser for BCRF—which makes TNBC a major focus of its annual research investment—that raised more than $37,000.
“Research made me feel safe during the scariest moments of my life,” Marcella said. “And it gives me hope that I will have a long life to enjoy with my family.”
Please remember BCRF in your will planning. Learn More
