BG breast cancer survivor shares pregnancy diagnosis testimony

American Cancer Society offers resources to connect with community

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Breast cancer. It’s a nightmare one in eight women face in their lifetime.

The American Cancer Society reports roughly 4000 women in Kentucky have been diagnosed with breast cancer in just 2022 alone.

ACS Cancer Support Strategic Partnerships Manager Ellen Schroeder said, “It’s scary to be diagnosed with cancer, but it’s also scary to move on through survivorship and not know what’s next.”

ACS’s Reach to Recovery is one way people diagnosed with breast cancer have been able to bond with women who’ve been in their shoes.

“The idea of Reach to Recovery is connecting patients with similar experiences with a similar diagnosis, similar experience, (maybe family or caregiver situation) so that they can ask for you know how to how to deal with some support and how to how to help each other through that diagnosis,” explained Schroeder.

For people with other types of cancers, you can also connect globally using Cancer Survivors Network.

“Cancer Survivors Network is basically a chat room type of setup so that patients have that support that they need when they need it,” Schroeder continued. “Not only do they get information: they might make a friend.”

Here in Bowling Green, 32-year-old Ashley Galloway learned she had breast cancer while she was 10 weeks pregnant.

“It took a while for it to feel real… I was worried about my son. I wasn’t sure what they could do for me.”

15 months later, she learned her metastatic breast cancer spread to her bones.

Galloway says to this day, “[The cancer] is all throughout my spine, my hips, my femur, my ribs and my skull.”

Six years later, after a mastectomy and lots of love from friends and family Ashley’s cancer has not progressed.

“To any women out there who do get that metastatic diagnosis, do not get on the internet and read,” Galloway cautions. “You read that you have a year to two years [to live], and my cancer stayed in my bones and has not moved for that long.”

To other women hearing their own diagnoses for the first time, Galloway encourages you not to go through this fight alone.

“There’s something about being able to reach out to someone who knows exactly what you’re going through. That it’s just really beneficial.”

Currently, there are very few in-person breast cancer support groups in the SOKY region; a fact both Schroeder and Galloway hope changes in the near future.