Breast cancer survivor reflects on two years since diagnosis

Teaching preschool takes a special kind of person – one with a lot of energy.

Allison Hopkins Prey was that person for many years. In the middle of treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, though, she wondered if she’d ever be that person again. Now, after finishing her treatments at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, participating in the Breast Cancer Survivors' Fit Club at the MUSC Wellness Center and working diligently to regain as much function and stamina as possible, she dares to use the word “normal.”

“I definitely find that now, a year later, I have much more energy. I'm not sleeping as much, and I feel like I'm back to myself, which is nice because at some point in time, you don't think you're ever going to feel like that,” she said.

That raised questions for Prey. “Like, how am I going to go to work full time? I like to go to barre classes but how am I going to go to work and then go work out? How am I going to have the stamina to travel? Sometimes it's hard to think that everything is going to come back and be normal – but now it really seems like a long time ago.”

Unexpected diagnosis

Prey had already been through one heartbreaking cancer journey. Her younger brother, Peter, had recently received a bone marrow transplant at MUSC but had died from complications of the procedure.

 

That wasn’t necessarily on her mind, though, when she came to MUSC in June 2022 for a breast reduction. After all, she’d had a clean mammogram within the past year. And as someone with dense breast tissue – a risk factor for breast cancer – she had made sure to get breast ultrasounds in addition to mammograms. She was just about due for her next mammogram.

But when she woke up from surgery, her husband, Greg, broke the news – the surgeons had found cancer.

“I thought he was kidding. I was just in shock,” she said.

The couple – married only six months – was plunged into a brand-new world.

“I think the hardest part was when I first found out – there's so much information. You're just trying to digest the fact that you have breast cancer but then there's a lot of information coming your way – information that was very foreign to my husband and myself,” she said.

Prey used her phone to record her conversations with doctors so that she could go back and listen again to be sure she caught everything that was said – something she highly recommends that other patients do.

A bonding and sharing time

Prey was scheduled for surgery to check whether the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She was immediately comfortable with her surgeon, Andrea Abbott, M.D. – she had taught one of Abbott’s children in preschool several years before.

In fact, lots of those connections kept coming up throughout her treatment. Several of the parents at the preschool worked at MUSC and were supportive. She also remembered many of the names of nurses her brother had talked about during his treatment and came to know them in her new role as patient.

“I felt like I really knew the staff already,” she said. “I had already had a really great experience with MUSC because of the care that he was given. So I felt, even though I was obviously in shock, that I was in the best of hands here.”

Prey’s cancer was identified as Stage 1 triple-negative breast cancer. Luckily, it had not spread to the lymph nodes. However, triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype, so she was scheduled for both chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

 

While Prey underwent 16 rounds of chemo followed by 16 rounds of radiation, she was sharing her experiences with two cousins and two close friends across the country who were also undergoing cancer treatment.

“We were all just kind of bonding over our own experiences,” she said.

She also appreciated the support of her school community. “My coworker started a meal train, which was great. My husband and I got some great meals, and I also got to see friends and coworkers and stay connected,” she said.

“I'm used to being in a large community so that was really nice to have that to stay connected with my school."

Prey used a CaringBridge site to journal about her treatments – both for herself and for friends and relatives scattered across the country. Journaling became a therapeutic activity for her, she said. It also gave her a way to mark time. Every day at treatment, she would take a photo of the scarf she was wearing or the socks that a friend had sent. She was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and care that came her way.

“Every day was like Christmas – I kid you not,” she said. “Every day, there was a package at my door from friends, family, women I hadn't spoken to since I graduated from college in 1986, sending me flowers, donating to my fund, helping with my bills, sending me hats, gloves, scarfs, socks, blankets, books.

“I was just really blown away by the thoughtfulness and the handwritten notes of people sharing their own experiences.”

Getting back on her feet

Prey generally tries to look for the positives, but she acknowledges there were times when that was hard to do. Nonetheless, she found that sharing her story helped her.

To help to pay the bills, first for her brother and then for herself, she had started a fundraising page through the Bone Marrow & Cancer Foundation, an organization that hosts GoFundMe-type pages specifically for people undergoing cancer treatment.

 

But as she became close with the women at the foundation, she also helped develop the CancerBuddy app, a peer-support app that connects people to others facing a similar diagnosis or with similar interests.

“For me, part of my therapy was sharing my story,” she said.

She also decided to turn a negative into a positive by cutting off her hair and donating it to Children With Hair Loss, an organization that provides free human-hair wigs to children who’ve lost their hair for medical reasons.

And once she finished with active treatment, she joined the Survivors' Fit Club, a shared initiative of Hollings and the MUSC Wellness Center. There, she found community with other women who had walked a similar path.

“It was definitely the highlight of my summer last year,” she said.

Survivors' Fit Club is a 10-week program that includes physical activity geared toward breast cancer survivors, nutrition education and a mental wellness component.

“I think it is an amazing program. A lot of people I talked to who’ve gone through breast cancer in other parts of the country said they wish they had that experience in their hospital,” Prey said.

“I learned how to box. I took a lot of swimming classes, which I really enjoyed. But the best part was bonding with women like myself who’d gone through breast cancer, and just talking about what our lives were like before,” she said.

Prey is now in the “after” stage. She returned to work full time in August 2023 after spending the spring of 2023 subbing. Her hair is back. She no longer wears a scarf (perhaps to the disappointment of some preschoolers, who thought she looked rather like a pirate).

She’s happy to share her story, which involves the most common type of cancer affecting women. “I think everybody has a story, whether it's themselves or someone close to them,” she said.

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