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A 21-year-old athlete, Hope Reynolds, who was diagnosed with cancer, shared the symptoms that raised concerns and led her to visit the doctor.
Hope was preparing for her senior year as a competitive swimmer at Hope College in Michigan when she started experiencing severe migraines and constant nausea. She couldn’t eat anything and went to the doctor to check on her migraines. During the visit, she mentioned finding a lump in her right breast. Though the doctor wasn’t very concerned, a mammogram was ordered as a precaution.
When she tried to schedule the mammogram, she was told the facility didn’t perform them for people her age, so she had an ultrasound instead. That’s when the situation changed. The provider told her they found something, but since she was young, the chances of it being cancer were very low. They decided to do a biopsy just to be sure.
Two days after the biopsy, Hope received a call during a grad school interview. The nurse left messages asking her to call back, which made her nervous. The diagnosis came shortly after: she had stage 3B invasive ductal carcinoma at the age of 21.
It was a whirlwind of decisions and changes for Hope—figuring out where to get treatment, whether to put school on hold, and how fast everything was moving. Within 48 hours, she was back in Pennsylvania to start treatment. That fall, she went through eight rounds of chemotherapy, followed by a bilateral mastectomy in February 2021 and 25 rounds of radiation through March and April.
Her swim team showed great support by wearing bracelets with the hashtag #BelieveinHope and a Bible verse, Hebrews 6:19. Hope was able to swim in her last college meet before radiation, even though she was told she couldn’t swim after starting radiation due to skin damage risks.
After finishing radiation, she returned to school for her senior year and had her final surgery in July 2021, a reconstruction that replaced her expanders with implants. The next month, she moved to North Carolina to pursue her dream of becoming a physical therapist at Duke University and transferred her cancer care to Duke Health.
Now in remission, Hope is taking control of her life again. She works as a physical therapist in acute care at Duke Health and is focused on living life to the fullest. Despite her cancer journey, she says, “Just because I’m a cancer survivor doesn’t mean I can’t do what everyone else can do.”
