A 21-Year-Old College Athlete Went to the Doctor For Migraines. She Was Diagnosed With Breast Cancer: 'It Can Happen To Anyone'

In August 2020, Hope Reynolds was starting her senior year as a swimmer at Hope College in Holland, Mich., but bad migraines and nausea were putting a damper on what should have been a celebratory semester. “I was not able to eat anything,” says Reynolds, now 25.

So she visited the doctor to talk about her migraines, and while she was there, she casually mentioned to that she had found a lump in her right breast. “The doctor was not really concerned,” Reynolds recalls, but she ordered a mammogram anyway.

When Reynolds called to make an appointment, she was told the facility didn’t do mammograms on people her age, so she went for an ultrasound instead — and the scan detected something.

“I distinctly remember the provider came in and said, ‘We see something. The odds of it being cancerous are so low because of your age, but let's just do a biopsy just in case,’” Reynolds remembers. “Again, I was reassured that it probably wasn't anything serious.”

Two days after the biopsy, on September 14, 2020, she was interviewing for physical therapy grad school, when she saw repeated missed calls on her phone.

"The nurse was leaving voicemails saying, ‘Please call me back.’ I kind of knew that it wasn't good," Hope says. The diagnosis: Stage 3B invasive ductal carcinoma. She was 21 years old.

"It's just a whirlwind, trying to figure out, 'Okay, am I going to get treatment in Michigan? Am I going to go home to Pennsylvania for treatment? Am I going to have to put undergrad on hold? Am I going to have to put PT school on hold? Things moved really fast, but it felt really slow. I felt like every hour was just crawling by," she says.

Within 48 hours of her diagnosis, she was back at her parents' home in Pennsylvania to undergo treatment locally.

That fall, she had eight rounds of chemotherapy, followed by a bilateral mastectomy in February 2021 and 25 rounds of radiation throughout March and April 2021.

Her swim teammates had bracelets made printed with #BelieveinHope and the Bible verse Hebrews 6:19, which includes the words "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul," and Hope got to compete with them one last time that year.

"I was so excited that I got to swim in my last ever college swim meet a few weeks after my surgery, but before I started radiation, because they said once I started radiation, I wasn't allowed to get in the water because it can really damage your skin," she says.

A few weeks after completing radiation, she returned to school to finish the last month of her senior year in person.

That summer, in July 2021, she had the final surgery in which they removed her expanders and put in breast implants, and the following month, she moved to Durham, N.C. to attend graduate school in physical therapy at Duke University — and she transferred her cancer care to Duke Health.

But even with her cancer treatment behind her, she's still fighting health battles of another kind.

"I really struggled with health anxiety, and I kind of developed a distrust of my body," she says. "I didn't have any reason that could explain why I got breast cancer. I was young, I was kind of a health nut and an athlete. No history of breast cancer in my family or anything — so there was no real reason for it. I didn't understand how that could have happened, and so I didn't trust that something like that wouldn't happen to me again."

That means, she says, "I have been in and out of therapy, talking with therapists for almost two years now about learning to not freak out over every single little ache and pain. I feel like that was the hardest part for me: Moving on and learning to trust my body and go back to living my life, not in this state of fear of the worst-case scenario happening."

Reynolds also credits her parents for managing the often-overwhelming details of health care that accompany a cancer diagnosis, to allow her to focus on healing.

"They were the ones that were asking the questions. They were the ones that were making sure that I had the medications I needed. They talked with my oncologist — I was there and listening and got to express what I wanted and what I needed — but they took the reins so I was able to just focus on taking care of myself. And they also focused on taking care of me," she says.

Now that treatments are finished, she's taking the reins back. "After that, a lot of the decisions fell more towards me on my own. All of a sudden I had this new thing that I had to think about: 'What does life actually look like now?' I was so focused on just getting through it. I never thought about, 'Okay, now what about after cancer?' That was really difficult. I'm still figuring it out day-by-day."

She definitely knew that life post-cancer would involve her dream career. She completed graduate school and is now a physical therapist doing a residency in acute care at Duke Health.

"Just because I'm a cancer survivor doesn't mean that I can't do what everyone else can do," she says. "Yes, I had cancer, but you can go back to living your life in so many amazing ways afterwards."

In fact, she says her cancer journey has made her better at her work.

"What I went through has really helped me in terms of how treat my patients. My experience not only allows me to have more empathy, but it also gave me this perspective of knowing that empathy can only go so far," she explains. "No one can know exactly what I felt going through my own cancer journey, s so I try to remind myself that I will never know exactly what my patients are feeling and what they're going through. All I can do is try my best to hear them and try to empathize, but [also] validate that there are things that they're going through that I can't completely understand."

For now, she still sees an oncologist at Duke for survivorship and maintenance therapies. She takes one pill daily and gets a shot every three months and an infusion every six months.

She got a year after her mastectomy, on National Cancer Survivors Day.

"It was a reminder to just always believe that things will turn out okay and believe that God is in control and looking out for us," she says. "I wanted to get a tattoo just to remind myself of the strength I have, which allowed me to get through my cancer journey." Her mother got a coordinating tattoo when she visited a couple months later.

She now shares her story to help others.

"I am very passionate about advocating for breast cancer awareness among young women. It can happen to anyone at any age, no matter how healthy you are, no matter your family history," she says.

And she also recognizes that her mindset has changed in the years since her diagnosis.

"I don't know what my life would've looked like without it. It's kind of just been my normal, but it has been a rollercoaster, lots of ups and downs," she says. "I always say I've learned to appreciate the small things in life and recognize that there are so many unpredictable parts of life, and life is short and nothing is guaranteed.

"I feel like cancer created this mindset change to where, though I still get anxious and worry about things, I try my best to really focus on enjoying every day and trying to keep a positive mindset no matter what happens."

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