In January of 2024, Lyndsey Williams’ life was changed forever.
She had just turned 40 and did the normal thing of scheduling a mammogram, which was originally scheduled for her birthday, but ultimately happened a couple of days later.
After the baseline test, she came back for a diagnostic test a week later. Following the test, she was asked to wait a minute. Then, they asked her to do an ultrasound. Shortly after that, the radiologist came in looking very concerned.
“I work in healthcare, so I was a little bit like, stop coding it, you know? Then I talked to a navigator, and she wanted me to have a biopsy the next week. She said 80% of biopsies are negative, and I was like, oh, OK. So, I was very upset, and I just needed to get out of here,” Williams said.
That’s when everything became a flurry of worry. The results indicated something was wrong. The next week came another scan, then another, then another. And the worry continued to grow.
Finally, the answer that was not remotely on Williams’ radar just a few weeks earlier.
Breast cancer.
“After we got the MRI results back, it looked like there were five lymph nodes,” Williams said.
On March 23, she had a double mastectomy in Indianapolis. They actually found seven lymph nodes and took out 16 lymph nodes under her left arm. Seven were cancerous, but she got clear margins, and everything else came back good.
“I had about two and a half weeks to heal, and my oncologist immediately wanted to start chemo because of the amount of lymph nodes involved,” Williams said.
She started chemotherapy the next week and did it for five months. The therapy can be very taxing physically and mentally. For one of the sessions, she took Adriamycin, commonly known as the “Red Devil.”
The five months of chemo were followed up by six weeks of radiation.
“Even though it’s quick, you go every day but weekends,” Williams said.
The treatment does stop after that.
Williams is on a 10-year plan and will be taking medication until 2034.
“So, long story short, I turned 40, had breast cancer, that had zero signs or symptoms, and, in a blink of an eye, my life dramatically changed,” Williams said. I lost all my hair; it’s grown back, but I didn’t anticipate being bald ever in my life.”
“It’s so twofold for me. And a lot of times, sometimes, when I talk about it, I still get emotional, but I’m doing better,” Williams said. “I feel extremely grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to see life the way that I see it now. A lot of people experiencing life don’t have that experience, because they don’t get to see how truly, truly magnificent, significant, and precious it is. We kind of just go through life, and you just assume everything’s fine, great, and you’re invincible. And you’re not.”
Williams believes strongly in the importance of sharing her story, just so that others are aware of all it entails.
“Oh, I go everywhere and share it,” Williams said. “I think I did a couple of news interviews last year. I will talk to anyone about it because, again, I remember people don’t realize you can have immediate reconstruction and there’s federal law around that. I think there’s just so much lack of information and then misinformation. I understand it’s a personal health situation, so a lot of people don’t like to talk about that. But at the same time, when you do talk about it, you humanize the situation.”
Williams will continue to tell her story and continue supporting a community she didn’t know she would be a part of nearly three years ago.
This is the first part of a two-part story with Lyndsey Williams, a breast cancer survivor and the chair of the Making Strides of Fort Wayne event, which is Saturday, Oct. 24th at Parkview Field. Part two will come out on Thursday, Oct. 22.
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