Research is the Reason I’m Embracing Every Moment

Because of research, Tamisha Love is here to celebrate her family’s milestones

As a new mom, 41-year-old Tamisha Love barely had time to herself. But one day, taking a rare moment to relax on the couch, she felt a lump.

“It felt like it showed up overnight,” Tamisha said. “I didn’t remember feeling it before then; I was nursing, so I was very familiar with my breasts. This felt like a rock.”

Initially, she didn’t consider cancer; although her father had died from pancreatic cancer, she had no family history of breast cancer. Still, she knew something was off.

After a long fertility journey, Tamisha became pregnant at 40—the same age several organizations recommend women begin annual breast cancer screening—but was advised to wait, as breasts change during pregnancy. After finding the lump, she called her doctor and asked, “Where do I go to get a mammogram?”

Tamisha’s physician suspected the lump might be a clogged milk duct but ordered a scan to be safe. After that, she was told to come in the next day for a biopsy, and then the waiting began.

Tamisha and her husband, Derik, debated whether to wait at home for her biopsy results or take her bonus son to Chicago for a preplanned college visit. In the end, they jumped at the opportunity for a distraction. “We continue living,” Derik said at the time.

When they returned, her doctor advised her to schedule an appointment with an oncologist. Feeling overwhelmed, Tamisha went in for the appointment and listened as the doctor told her: “It’s aggressive. It’s triple-negative.” She remembered thinking the doctor’s words felt like a foreign language to her; she didn’t even know there were different types of breast cancer.

Tamisha learned that while triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is aggressive, it was treatable at her stage and could respond well to chemotherapy. Still, the devastating thought swirled in her head: Am I going to die?

“I just thought surely God wouldn’t work this hard just to bring me this far,” she said. “I didn’t want my child to not have a mom.”

Tamisha began chemo a month later, and when it was time to have surgery, in April 2020, the world was shut down because of COVID-19, adding another layer to an already emotional journey.

“For some women, especially women of color, their concerns can sometimes get dismissed. We’re sometimes viewed as having this high tolerance for pain or discomfort. I’m so thankful that was not my experience,” she said.

After surgery and subsequent radiation, she was supposed to have a staycation to celebrate with her husband, but instead, they had to call an ambulance. She soon discovered she had developed pancreatitis and needed her gallbladder removed.

While she felt she had faced her last hurdle, finishing treatment didn’t feel like a celebration. “There’s no other medication that I can take that gives me a defense against this potentially coming back,” she said. “The hardest part has been navigating survivorship.”

A year after Tamisha was diagnosed, her daughter turned one. Early on, she remembered asking her doctor: “Will I be here for her birthday?” The oncologist said, “You’re going to be there for that, and we can go ahead and mark up your calendar for when she goes to kindergarten too.”

Tamisha’s daughter started kindergarten this past August.

TNBC’s aggressiveness was not lost on Tamisha; she reflects on a colleague who diagnosed with the form and passed away in March 2024.

“She was a mom, she had three children, a husband. She had a great career. She was only 44,” Tamisha said. “I think about her—and I think about me. I don’t think her level of faith and her drive was any different than mine, but for whatever reason, we had different outcomes.”

Tamisha supports research for women like herself and her colleague and wants to see more treatments for TNBC.

“We need more research on TNBC,” she said. “I hope we find the connection and can prevent—prevent it from coming back and prevent it from happening. I don’t believe that God saved me just to keep it to myself. It’s part of why I’m still here: to show what’s possible.”

Read more stories from BCRF’s Research Is the Reason storytelling initiative here.