"Had I not had that ultrasound, I may still not know I have stage 4 breast cancer," Morgan Ryland said.
Morgan Ryland assumed it was mastitis, a condition generally faced by new mothers from breastfeeding, but that wasn’t the case. After becoming a mom for the third time for Westin, Ryland couldn’t fathom the severity of her breast tissue swelling. Until she went to her primary care doctor for treatment who agreed that something wasn’t right but believed the swollen breast tissue could be from feeding. To be on the safe side the doctor recommended she gets an ultrasound done and the results startled the mother of three, according to PEOPLE.
Recalling how she came to know about cancer over her social media platform Instagram she said, "The ultrasound led to a mammogram, which led to another ultrasound, which led to three biopsies. We waited and prayed. Then came the call. 'Morgan, I'm sorry. It's cancer.'" Further, the medical practitioners performed a PET scan to see if the cancer had spread to other parts of her body. The test revealed small spots on both her liver and spine pointing to the severity of it. "Thank God I did. Had I not had that ultrasound, I may still not know I have stage 4 breast cancer," she told the outlet.
But the hard journey just began, "My worst fears had come true. It was Stage 4 cancer. No longer curable," she writes as she later got the diagnosis confirming her condition. Ryland disclosed that her real concern is for her three children she shares with her wife Amber. Hudson, aged 7, Asher, aged 5, and Westin, aged 18 months only are parented by both of them. "Getting a stage 4 diagnosis was so unbelievable to wrap my head around. I just kept thinking, 'I'm gonna wake up from this. This is not ... this cannot be real,' " she shared.
Ryland has no family history of cancer despite which she is suffering from the deadly ailment. The 37-year-old has two types of breast cancer. One she's HR-positive/HER2-negative and one she's HR-negative/HER2-positive. "I have multiple, multiple tumors in my breast. Typically it's like, you have one large tumor, and that's the cancerous tumor. And you either have like a lumpectomy or you have a mastectomy, and they remove that tumor and they treat it. But I have many small tumors, and we're still not quite sure how many are in there," she described the tumors.
Ryland is confident she will make it through for her children and family. "Above all because of my precious boys. Hudson. Asher. Westin. I'm walking through the flames for them. I'm going to come out the other side," she said.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family sail through the tough times with some financial assistance through the crowdfunding website. The page set by friends says, “I am turning to you all to support our sweetest, dearest friend and brightest light of our lives, Morgan Ryland, and her family. While the Rylands are so grateful to have the resources and access to some of the best breast cancer oncologists in the world, battling cancer involves so much more than just getting the proper treatments. Their priority is keeping life as normal and routine as possible for the kids and shielding them from the gravity of it all.”
References:
https://people.com/health/37-year-old-mom-of-3-diagnosed-with-2-types-breast-cancer-stage-4/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrllO8FJVWP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Cover Image Source: GoFundMe
