We have one more guest blogger for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, even though we’re posting on November 1! While the colors change from pink to fall colors, the need to advocate for ourselves doesn’t take the season off. Our guest learned that the hard way, and she’s turning what she learned into something that will help a lot of other women. Read her story, then go check your breasts.
From Stefanie Fackrell, Founder, URBreastie
One year ago today, I was sitting in an awful pink hospital robe, waiting for my biopsy.
But the journey really started in April 2025, when I felt some pain in my right breast. I marked it on my calendar and didn’t think much of it. Then in June, during a self-check, I found a mass the size of my pinky finger. I looked up at my husband with dread, and he said, “What is it now?”
It was a fair question. We’d already been through a devastating loss in 2024, and coming out of that grief neither of us felt ready for another blow. My husband had lost his job in February 2025, and I’d recently become an entrepreneur, so I was on basic state insurance and had been assigned a doctor I didn’t know (or trust).
After I found the mass, I went to him and said, “I think I need a mammogram.” This was my first time meeting him and he was dismissive, felt the lump, wrote an order, and sent me on my way. I waited a month for that scan. I didn’t spiral or turn to Dr. Google. I meditated and kept myself busy and stayed positive.
Everything was going to be ok, no matter what.
On the day of the scan, I undressed and sat waiting. My nurse came in, gently put her hand on mine, and said, “I’m so sorry, but the doctor ordered the wrong tests.”
Are you f*cking kidding me?! A month. Gone.
Yeah….my first reaction was “what the f*ck?!” My second was to think of every woman who wouldn’t have pushed back or gotten angry. The women on fixed incomes, the underrepresented, the ones who don’t have access or were never taught how to advocate for themselves. The women that don’t have time to wait a month for a wrong test…and wait another who god knows how long til the right test gets ordered!
Here I was, a college-educated, middle-class woman, and I was still being brushed aside. So I told that nurse exactly what to tell the doctor, and then I called him myself and gave him a piece of my mind, too!
On the drive home that day, I called my husband to talk to him about the f*ck up that just happened. And miracle of miracles, he let me know that that very afternoon, he’d received a job offer he’d been waiting on.
I believe the universe works in mysterious ways. It meant another delay before our new insurance kicked in, but it also meant I could go back to a medical team that knew me, had my history, and actually cared about me.
Fast forward to September - I finally got an emergency ultrasound and mammogram from my regular care team. They saw the lump and the calcifications that had been flagged the year before, and booked me to come back for a biopsy.
Which brings me back to that robe on this very day in October 2025. By then, I knew. Call it intuition or just knowing my body very well. My grandmother had breast cancer, twice - and I just felt it in my bones that I did, too. But I wasn’t fearful, I was very zen. I sat in that room talking to my grandmother, to my friend Elise (who had breast cancer three times) and to my brother, who had died tragically the year before - I asked them to stay with me, to keep me calm and know that I was going to be ok, no matter what.
The call with the results came in the second week of November 2025. Breast cancer. I thanked the doctor, told her I looked forward to hearing the path forward.
I sat my husband down to tell him and then called my family, and then had one very honest thought: I don’t want to die. My immediate next thought? Let’s go get martinis and figure this out.
So we did! And somewhere around the second martini, I decided this was going to be a minor inconvenience. I might have cancer, but cancer does not have me. Cancer picked the wrong person.
No matter what, everything was going to be ok.
I leaned on a few close friends who knew hardship and allowed me to let them care for me (when normally that isn’t my style). I talked to women who’d walked this road before me, and then I let my own journey be my own.
I wore a ball gown to my surgery in January 2026 and thanked everyone as they wheeled me into the OR.
And yes, I popped champagne that very night after surgery (sorry, not sorry doc!)
A lumpectomy, one lymph node, six weeks of waiting, then radiation in March 2026, which was gentler than I’d envisioned. I’ll be on an estrogen blocker for five years, and I’m mindful of what I eat. I’m almost 100% back to my BEASTMODE schedule at the gym. But mostly, I sit in gratitude.
Cancer brings clarity and helps you re-prioritize.
One thing through all of this - I have never stopped thinking about the people who get sidelined. The ones choosing between groceries and treatment. Even with insurance, the costs add up. My treatment was half a million dollars!! My esthetician? ONE MILLION DOLLARS! I am aghast.
How does our system expect anyone to pay for these life saving treatments when….people are barely making ends meet?!
Once my treatments were finished, I immediately started building URBreastie, a website/app for anyone facing a breast cancer diagnosis. It will help you track your journey and your spending, rally a care team for rides and meals, connect with your health records, find clinical trials nearby, and even draft insurance appeal letters with an AI assistant.
Most importantly, it will be a community, a place where the newly diagnosed, those in treatment, and those years out can find each other, share stories, and raise funds for women who can’t afford care.
Nobody should have to do this alone. And nobody should have to fight this hard just to be Heard.
Advocate for yourself. Check your breasts. And if you need a community, I’m building one for you.
Stefanie is the Founder of dysruptiveHR. She is a People and Talent leader who helps startups scale their teams - currently building two Series A/B start ups! After finishing breast cancer treatment in March, she began building URBreastie, an app and community supporting people through diagnosis, treatment, and beyond - to be launched in 2027.
