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Mother With Stage 4 Breast Cancer And Her Family 'Focus On The Living'

Christina McAmis' cancer journey began when she found a lump while breastfeeding. The attorney and mother of three tells the "Cancer Horizons" podcast what the last nine years have been like for her and her family.

It's been nearly a decade since Christina McAmis began her journey with stage 4 breast cancer. At the time, she was a 32-year-old married mother of three, including twin boys and a baby daughter, and had recently begun studying at a California law school.

"All sorts of positive, amazing things were coming together into what I thought was going to be the happiest time of my life," she told CURE®.

While breastfeeding her six-month-old daughter, McAmis found a lump, approximately half of the size of a grain of rice, close to her sternum. Given her family history of breast cancer, McAmis began seeing Dr. Claudia DeYoung, an internist specializing in breast health who runs the Center for Breast Health at the South Sacramento Kaiser Permanente Medical Center.

Breast cancer survivor, Christina McAmis (center), found a lump while breastfeeding that ended up being breast cancer.

Photo courtesy of Christina McAmis

"We had done an ultrasound and determined that it seemed like just a lymph node, I was still nursing so having a lymph node swollen in that area was not surprising," McAmis said. "I had just started law school, so my nursing schedule had been completely changed because of that (and) my daughter never did ever take a bottle. … And so, we had decided to watch that and if there were changes to let Dr. DeYoung know."

McAmis became wrapped up in law school, and a couple of weeks before midterms she received an emergency phone call while picking up her sons from school.

"I needed to come home right away, my townhouse was on fire," she said. "And literally the townhouse next door burnt down to the ground, we were lucky enough just to sustain some really heavy smoke damage. I spent that night with my 12-month-old — who does not sleep well at other people's houses — at my friend's house."

McAmis had to wake up at 6 a.M. The next day for an appointment with DeYoung, but she was in no mood to do so.

"I was like, 'I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this,'" she said. "But somewhere in the back of my brain was just like, 'You've got to do this, it needs to just happen.' So, I pulled on my big girl boots and trumped off to Dr. DeYoung's office. And we decided to biopsy at that point, because the mass had not gotten really much bigger, but also had not gone away at all."

Testing determined that McAmis had breast cancer, that the disease was in her lymph nodes and she a lesion on her breastbone, just above her heart.

"At that point, we decided to stop playing, (that) this was stage four, that it had metastasized," she said.

Chemotherapy, then surgery to remove her breasts and ovaries, followed. McAmis, now working as an attorney, and DeYoung have reconnected via the Cancer Survivorship Program following McAmis' completion of active treatment as she transitioned to maintenance therapy.

"You know, that grain of (rice), pea-sized lump that Christina and her husband had felt, looked on imaging (to be) benign," DeYoung said. "But it wasn't. … That follow-up is crucial. That follow up by Christina, that follow up by her care team. And so, I'm glad we stayed on it.

"And again, there's always hindsight and (you could say) 'Coulda, woulda, shoulda,' (but) the fact of the matter is we made the best decision at the point in time with the evidence that we had, with the agreement that we're going to monitor this and if it goes away, then great (and) if it doesn't or if it changes then we're going to go down a different route. And we were true to that plan. And thank goodness we were."

In this episode of the CURE "Cancer Horizons" podcast, Christina and Dr. DeYoung discuss her cancer journey and Christina shares how she and her family have navigated it together for the last nine years.

"I … told (my children) that right now, we're living," McAmis said. "I am living, and we're going to focus on the living."

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don't forget to subscribe to CURE®'s newsletters here.

Breast Cancer Means I May Never Be A Mom, But Being An Aunt Is The Best Medicine Imaginable

Sally Joy Wolf decided to freeze her eggs. Then she received her first breast cancer diagnosis.

While the diagnosis upended her vision of motherhood, being an aunt fulfills her. 

This is her story, as told to writer Kate Watson.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sally Joy Wolf. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always wanted to be a mom. If you asked me eight years ago what that would entail, I would have been certain it would look like having my own biological children. That was before I was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

A couple years before I was first diagnosed, my sister Heidi was pregnant with her first child. We were living in New York City, just two blocks apart, and I loved seeing her growing baby bump up close. Knowing my sister and her husband were beginning to create their family helped me feel the time was finally right to freeze my eggs, even though I was perpetually single. As Heidi's belly expanded in the final stages of pregnancy, my own bloated with eggs. The synchronicity felt something like fate, and we even kidded that, years later, we could tell the kids they were partially created in the same year. 

In December 2013, I completed my first round of egg freezing, and I became "Auntie" three weeks later. I was at the hospital when Ryan arrived. When I held him less than two hours after he was born, he had my whole heart. However much I expected to love this baby, it paled to what I felt in that moment.

For the first several years of Ryan's life, my sister and her family continued to live in Manhattan. When my nephew was a newborn, I'd often stop by for impromptu visits in the morning before work. As he grew older, I would occasionally pick him up from preschool and take him on special "Auntie adventures." We would buy crafting supplies or visit the firehouse to climb into the big red trucks.

Two years later, in the lead-up to the birth of Ryan's little sister Alex, I worried that I wouldn't have any love left for another child. After all, Ryan had my whole heart. But my dad, a father of three, explained my heart would grow. He was right — Alex captured my heart all over again. I began to wonder whether it was time, at 40, to put my frozen eggs to use.

Then came the first of three cancer diagnoses. 

I was diagnosed with cancer

The first diagnosis, in December 2015, wasn't a shock. My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer while I was in high school, so I had been getting screened regularly since I was 32. I had reasoned that while I couldn't prevent cancer, I could at least get ahead of it with early detection.

In 2016, I had a double mastectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy. The doctors told me that my cancer was gone. But in 2018, my oncologist found another lump in my breast. After a full body PET scan and biopsy, we learned my cancer had spread to my hip. Just like that, the vocabulary changed: incurable, metastatic, stage 4.

That same year, my sister and her husband decided to move their family out of the city to a suburb in Connecticut. The previous year, they'd had a third baby — another girl, whom they named Andi — and even a big apartment by New York City standards can feel small for a family of five. 

It was a difficult time, and I dug deep within myself, relying on positive-psychology methods I had studied while I was on medical leave. These coping mechanisms, combined with support from my family — my parents, my siblings, and those kids who called me Auntie — as well as regular dance classes, helped me build a deep resilience. While medication worked to keep my cancer from spreading, it became clear that I'd probably be treating my cancer for the rest of my life.

I still had my frozen eggs

The thought of my eggs, safely tucked away in a freezer at New York University, began to feel increasingly complicated. Years earlier, during my first go-around with cancer, both my sister and one of my college roommates offered to act as a surrogate if cancer treatment meant I couldn't safely carry a baby. While I'm forever grateful for those offers, my anxiety centered less on who would carry the pregnancy and more on what might happen after a baby arrived.

Cancer has shown me that life isn't guaranteed. I struggled with whether it would be selfish to invite a child into my world of doctor appointments, surgeries, pills, and injections. The physical realities of indefinite cancer treatment seemed incompatible with the demands of being a single mom. I didn't make a final decision, but I knew that I wasn't ready to become a mom at that moment.

Then came the pandemic. As the world shut down, I worried that because I was immunocompromised, I would feel unsafe and lonely in my NYC apartment. In mid-March 2020, my brother drove me to our sister's house. When I arrived, my favorite little people were excited to learn I was going to stay a week or two. I ended up staying for six months.  

Being an aunt helped me know a mother's love

The rhythm of those days took on a sweetness I'll never forget. A year earlier, while we were on vacation, Ryan had been my roommate. When he saw me writing in my gratitude journal at night, I explained I wrote down things I loved about the day that I wanted to remember — things that were "special moments." He joined me and would often choose something as simple as extra sprinkles on his ice cream. 

We continued a similar practice in the evenings when we were together during the pandemic. Over time, Ryan regularly began our ritual by saying, "Doing special moments is a special moment." His ability to stay present and grateful for the moment he was in regularly reminds me to do the same.

That time in Connecticut involved countless special moments with all the kids. Alex attended her first "sleepover" at 4 ½ in the guest room where I slept. I created a special to-do list for the evening, which included having a dance party, blowing up balloons, and doing a spa treatment. It would be the first of many sleepovers during that time. 

Andi was only 9 months old when her family moved to Connecticut, so I never had as much time with her in the city as I had with her siblings. During my extended stay in her home, she was too little to have remote school like her siblings did, which meant she was free to visit with me anytime she liked. Andi would occasionally join me for the virtual workshops I was leading. For weeks after I left her house and returned to the city, she would keep entering the room to see whether I had come back. 

My love for my nephew and nieces is full of tenderness. But it's a love that reminds me that one of my dreams may never come true in the exact way I imagined. At the same time, they bring what I see as the magic of motherhood into my life in a very real way.

While I may not be a mom, I believe I know a mother's love. I can't imagine not having this relationship with all three of these amazing, little humans. That fact raises a lot of hard questions. Part of me wishes I never had cancer at all, but if I hadn't, would I have gotten to be an aunt in this way?

Sally Wolf with her nieces and nephew. Photo courtesy of Sally Wolf

Most cancer stories we hear seem to have one of two endings. Someone either survives and is cured, or they die. I now know there's a third possibility: thriving. This is what I'm doing right now. Even with stage 4 incurable breast cancer, I have reasonable hope that I can live for decades. It's been five years since my cancer metastasized, and I'm still on my first-line treatment, which shows that even within this tough journey, I've caught some incredibly lucky breaks.

My motherhood journey hasn't looked like I ever would have guessed. Yes, it's been complicated, but it's been incredible, too. Every time I have a PET scan, I lay still in a long narrow tube. But my heart is bursting with activity picturing Ryan, Alex, and Andi. I envision their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, their college graduations, their first jobs, weddings, and maybe one day, their own children. And in each of these mental snapshots, I see myself, too, beside them, for all the special moments yet to come.

Sally Joy Wolf is an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer who combines expertise in positive psychology with her cancer journey to deliver messages of resilience, post-traumatic growth, and comprehensive wellbeing.

Benefit Dinner For Local Mom Fighting Stage 4 Breast Cancer

On Saturday, Aug. 5, Clare Church of the Nazarene will be holding a benefit for a young woman fighting stage 4 breast cancer.

In June 2018, at the age of 27, Tiffany was diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer. Tiffany had been married for a few years and she had a seven-month-old baby girl. After a year of conventional treatment, Tiffany went into remission for four years. February 2023, Tiffany found out after a visit to the ER that the cancer had returned and was in her liver, brain, and bones. She was told that she now had Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer. Her daughter is now five years old and Tiffany has since started conventional treatment again. With this new diagnosis, Tiffany has been traveling from Michigan to California to receive some of the best Integrative Cancer care in the country. Tiffany is holding on tight to her family and praying for a miracle.

The benefit on Aug. 5 will help Tiffany continue her treatment in California, as she is paying out of pocket. It starts at 3 p.M. And will include a pasta dinner, a silent auction, a bake sale, a 50/50 raffle, and a live auction starting at 5 p.M.

Leah Degase and Monica McGuire, who are helping with the dinner, tell us more.

To attend the dinner visit the Tiffany Slater Benefit Dinner Facebook page. To support this wonderful cause join the Tiffany Tribe Facebook group. If you are unable to attend but still wish to show your support you can donate through the Tiffany Slater Venmo page.

Tiffany Slater Benefit Dinner

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