My story begins at age 35 when I felt a lump in my breast.  Even though I am assured it will be nothing, an ultrasound shows that it is a suspicious lump.  While I am still under, after a biopsy, the doctors tell my husband that it is definitely cancer.  The cancer looks very aggressive as the lump has grown just in a short time.  I am diagnosed with stage three ductal carcinoma.  They will need to take my breast and determine a treatment plan.  I remember thinking my girls were so young, just 9 and 7 years old, how could this be happening??

Your world stops, but you regroup, and take it one crisis at a time.  My husband, Dennis, was my rock.  Along with Dennis, my friends, family and school community, kept me in their safe care.  I had a radical mastectomy and  four doses of a chemo cocktail.  Then the wait, did they get it all?  Am I going to be alright?  My answer comes three years post chemo I discover that I am expecting a third child.  My oncologist was surprised to say the least!

I wish my cancer story ended there, but along my journey of survival for 26 years, I have felt many losses from cancer.  My father-in-law passed from lung cancer, my father died after a long battle with prostate cancer, and my mother died with primary liver cancer.  My brother is fighting bladder cancer and I recently had skin cancer.  I have lost too many friends.  I volunteer because I never want my children or grandchildren to hear the words “you have cancer”.

My name is Laura Baldini and I live in San Francisco, California.   I walked my 1st Survivor Lap 11 years after my diagnosis.  I am active in my local Relay For Life of Mid-Peninsula and I am a Voice of Hope for the American Cancer Society.