
Darcey Gohring remembers the night in April 2020. “I was locked down at home with my husband and two teenage children. Hand washing and sanitizing on repeat. Nights filled with Zoom calls, puzzles, board games, and binging on Netflix,” she wrote in A Cancer Diagnosis Is Never Easy – But What If It Happens In the Middle of a Pandemic?
“And then one night, sitting on the couch watching a marathon of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Channel, everything changed. As I went to adjust my sports bra, my fingers grazed something, and I knew immediately what it was. A lump.”
At just 46 and without a family history of the disease, breast cancer wasn’t at the top of Darcey’s list of concerns. Besides, there was a pandemic going on. “Seemingly overnight, cases skyrocketed in the area,” she writes. “I worried about my husband and my daughter, who both have asthma. In my eyes, they were the vulnerable ones, not me. I was an avid runner, ate a healthy diet, and hadn’t been to the doctor for anything more than a sinus infection in decades.”
“I don't think I realized that women without a genetic history can get breast cancer,” she says. “I didn’t know about other things that can put you in a category where you might be more apt to get breast cancer. Like drinking wine. Or a high protein diet. I had absolutely no idea that they can increase your risk.”