Michelle Stravitz survived triple negative breast cancer | chemotherapy | radiation

Bruce Morton
Apr 24, 2021
24 min read

DESCRIPTION

Michelle Stravitz shares her story of survivorship after being diagnosed with Stage II triple negative breast cancer. Her journey began with a lump being discovered a self-exam of her breasts in May 2015. That led to a mammogram, a biopsy and her diagnosis. Hers was a very aggressive form of breast cancer and immediately Michelle went on a very aggressive chemotherapy regimen. She had to deal with hair loss, ‘chemo brain,’ and cancer-related fatigue, among other side effects. Upon completion of her chemotherapy regimen, she went on radiation therapy, but has bounced back with a vigorous yoga routine and the establishment of her own fitness-driven breast cancer support group.

When Michelle Stravitz of Fairfax, Virginia discovered a lump on one of her breasts, she immediately sought medical attention. Her doctor felt the affected breast said it was probably just a benign cyst and to return in six weeks. When she returned, the lump was still there, her doctor said it had grown and called for an immediate mammogram. That same day, she underwent the mammogram and a subsequent series of tests, which necessitated a biopsy. In early June 2015, she was diagnosed.

Because of the aggressiveness of Stage II triple negative breast cancer, Michelle underwent more tests, then was immediately placed on an aggressive chemotherapy regimen, doing 20 weeks of 16 infusions. That was followed by surgery and “a lot of radiation.”

Michelle said the hardest part of her chemo experience was being isolated from the friends and family that wanted to support her. She also had the inevitable cognitive issues, commonly known as chemo brain, which resulted in her lacking her normal executive function. Michelle also experienced temporary hair loss, and for a time had her head shaved, but when her hair came back, it was curlier than it was prior to her diagnosis. Also a common part of the chemotherapy experience was cancer-related fatigue, but she tried to be as active as she could, going on short walks and engaging in yoga.

Upon the completion of her treatment, Michelle Stravitz achieved survivorship, but it too years before she was comfortable with associating herself with the word ‘survivor.’ She has gone on to establish the support group, 2Unstoppable.org, which incorporates a fitness routine into the post-treatment lives of breast cancer survivors.

Additional Resources:

Support Group:

https://www.2Unstoppable.org

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Morton: Greetings, and welcome to the @CancerInterviews podcast. I am your host, Bruce Morton, and on this segment, we are going to amplify a theme that has gone pretty much unaddressed on this show. Our guest is Michelle Stravitz of Fairfax, Virginia. Michelle has survived breast cancer and continues on that journey, but at some point, she was inspired to go off on another journey, a journey that can possibly benefit you or somebody you know, so to learn more, let’s get after it, and Michelle, welcome to Cancer Interviews.

Michelle Stravitz: Thank you. It’s so great to be here.

BM: Now, Michelle, the first thing we like to do is let our listeners and viewers get to know a little bit more about you. So, we would like to hear about your life exclusive of your cancer journey, where you are from, what your life’s work has been, the sort of things you like to do with your leisure time, stuff like that.

MS: I live in Fairfax, Virginia. I grew up in the Northeast, in Massachusetts, but I have been in the DC area for more than 30 years. I am the mother of four young adult children, all of whom have fled the nest and are doing their own things, so I am an empty nester. I have an array of different things in my professional background, including management consulting. I took off a number of years to take care of my children and raise my family. We also have a dog, so I spend a lot of time walking my dog. Fitness has been an in-and-out part of my life. In the most recent years, I have taken up yoga and that is something I like to do in my spare time. I have been enjoying that for a number of years now, and it has taught me a lot more than just the physical yoga positions on the mat. I think it has taught a lot about mindfulness and meditation and how to think about life.

BM: You mentioned fitness, and we are going to get into that in depth a little bit later, but first I want to move on to your cancer journey, your first cancer journey, in terms of your surviving breast cancer and clashing swords with it. At what point, and when, Michelle, did you know that something merited medical attention?

MS: In the spring of 2015, I actually found a lump myself in my breast, and I went to my doctor and had him take a look. The truth is that when he first felt it, he told me it was probably something benign, like a cyst or whatever. He told me to wait six weeks and see what happens. So, I did and in the very end of May 2015, I came back to him and said it is still there. He agreed and said it had grown and that I needed to get a mammogram right away. As mentioned earlier, yoga was a big part of my life. This was a Friday morning. My doctor got me scheduled for a mammogram that afternoon and in between, I went to a yoga class to calm down. It got me through those hours in between, and I found myself going through a whole bunch of tests after the mammogram. I think it was pretty clear to everyone in the room, and right away they did a biopsy and by early June 2015, I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, Stage II. Triple negative breast cancer is the one you don’t want. It is a very aggressive form of breast cancer. It grows very quickly. It is a lot less common form of breast cancer. So, it was a very scary time, and as many, many newly-diagnosed cancer patients, I want through a week of very intensive testing. They were checking every other part of my body to see if it had spread. They were trying to diagnose it more accurately, and within a week, I had a port put in and I started chemo. With triple negative, you start chemotherapy right away because it is such an aggressive form of breast cancer. They were very worried about spread, so they start the systemic treatment first. I did about 20 weeks of 16 different infusions, a lot of chemotherapy. It was a very intense period of time, and that was followed by a surgery and then a lot of radiation.

BM: What was the worst part of your chemo experience?

MS: Interestingly, I think there were probably two “worst parts.” One was the fear before it started. I think that fear was worse than the actual experience, because it was just so scary and unknown. One of the things I was very conscientious about, I got a lot of advice from a lot of friends right away, and one of the things I did, I sort of ‘picked’ my chemo buddies. I selected a small circle of my world, of my good friends, that I chose to bring me to my chemo treatments, and for the very first infusion, I brought a friend of mine who I knew was not afraid of it, that she would not come to me with that aura of fear because I was so terrified, so that really helped to strengthen me. The strength of my friends was really important, but right before starting was a very scary time. Once I was in it, I think the hardest part was just the isolation. Cancer can be a very isolating experience. When you start worrying about your immune system and the germs in the world, you start to withdraw because you are afraid to get sick from other people. So, I had to work really hard to get myself out there, and to stay connected. I did feel very supported and connected by my close friends, my circle of friends and really, my entire community. It was a time of intense gratitude and support, but at the same time, I did feel different, and I had this sense of isolation.

BM: A couple of other guests we have had that were diagnosed with breast cancer and went through chemo, they have invoked this term, “Chemo brain,” and they have said, “Chemo brain, it’s real.” Would you agree, and are you familiar with that term?

MS: I am completely familiar with that term. I absolutely believe it is real. I would say I experienced it during chemo, but during chemo I gave myself a break. I let myself rest, I took a nap almost every afternoon, I took gentle walks. I really pulled back from some of my volunteer commitments, and so I was able to give myself a break; but once I got back into life and expected things to go back to normal, I realized that I really did have ‘chemo brain.’ I had fogginess, I didn’t have the same executive function, it was not the same for me. I worked really hard to evaluate that. I had a cognitive evaluation, I worked really hard to get that back. I asked for as much therapy as I could get to do that, and there were lots of other ways that you can work back from chemo brain. Exercise is part of that, and that was part of my personal journey.

BM: I think there is a bit of a double standard where the following question is concerned because I think this emotionally affects women far more than men; but as part of your chemo treatment, what was the hair loss piece in this whole equation like for you?

MS: My hair now is all new, and pre-cancer, it wasn’t curly. Sometimes you get what is called ‘chemo curls.’ Your hair comes back curlier than you ever thought it was. Because of my age it came back grayer than I remember it being, so that was kind of annoying. But the hair loss is a difficult part of chemotherapy. It is a reality, but it is a very difficult thing, and I mentor a lot of women who are going through this, and I say it is really difficult, and your hair will grow back. It’s temporary. So, there are other side effects of chemotherapy that are not temporary, but hair loss is. Once I knew I was going to lose my hair I was scared, but I was one of those people who said I was going to take control, so right away, I cut my hair shorter than it had been, so that when it fell out, I wouldn’t have these long locks, it would be a little shorter. When the time came and it really started to fall out and I found it all over the floor, I remember sitting in a chemotherapy infusion and when I got up, the hair was everywhere. It was on the floor, it was on the chair, it was on the gown. That’s when I realized it was time to have my head shaved. I had already gone and picked out a wig, again, something I needed to take control of. It was a difficult experience, but again chose a string, small circle of friends. My daughter came with me as well. People came with me to that experience. We turned it into a little party, and we tried to make it as positive as we could, and it was okay. Once I took control and it actually happened, just like the chemotherapy itself, it was less scary than beforehand. I think the anticipation is almost worse.

BM: There is one component in your cancer journey that maybe a lot of other people don’t have. You have already mentioned yoga and how it aided things for you when you heard you might be a candidate for breast cancer, but now, you are squarely in the middle of this cancer journey. To what extent did yoga help?

MS: Yoga helps in a lot of ways. First of all, exercise itself helps to reduce anxiety in just about everybody. That’s a known fact whether you have cancer or not, and cancer-related anxiety is tremendous. It is very common among cancer patients not only during treatment, but well after treatment. Survivorship is its own emotional rollercoaster, as all of us who have experienced it know. Yoga is helpful for the movement itself. For me, because I had a pretty large surgery and radiation, and that was on my left side, I had mobility issues, so in addition to physical therapy, yoga was a way to get my upper body mobility back and moving and stretching on a regular basis. The kind of positions I was doing in yoga really helped; so, from a physical standpoint, it was helping. From an anxiety reduction standpoint, it helps. Cancer-related fatigue is also a huge element and yoga is known to help with fatigue, so that was really helpful to me. The other thing was, continuing to go to yoga, and I went to generally more gentle yoga. I was very selective about where I went. At my regular studio, I didn’t go to the crowded classes because I was afraid of the germs, but I went to the emptier classes, and it just made me feel normal. It made me feel like life was continuing. The most important way in which yoga helps with the cancer journey is that in yoga, it helps me to learn about life. We talk about ‘staying on your mat.’ So, in yoga, your position is usually centered on a mat, and it is all about staying in the moment. So, you’re staying on the mat. You’re not thinking about the grocery list. You’re not thinking about what you are doing later today. You’re not thinking about what you did yesterday or three weeks ago or five years ago. You are staying in the moment and on your mat. I do a fairly athletic, intense yoga, and you can’t think about anything else except what you are doing in that moment. You also have an instructor giving you instruction every moment, so you are just listening to what they are telling you to do right now even if you don’t know what you are going to do in five minutes, and for me that was an excellent metaphor and a life lesson for getting through cancer. A lot of it is taking one day at a time and sometimes during treatment, it is one hour at a time. You just have to stay on your mat and stay in the moment. With cancer, we have a lot of worries about the future. You go through your treatment, and you don’t know how it is going to turn out, if it is going to be effective, if it is going to work, and then you go into survivorship and you are always worried about recurrence, but yoga teaches us to stay in the moment, so ‘at the moment,’ I’m okay. And that’s all I know. I don’t know what is going to come next.

BM: Michelle, it sounds like you were making progress in this journey, and I am guessing you reached a point in which you felt you were starting to get to the other side. What were the indicators that things were going well and that survivorship, if you will, seemed like a real possibility?

MS: I would say during treatment, you wait a really long time before you get your first scans to see if the tumor is shrinking. Then after surgery you wait, and the waiting is probably the hardest part. After those tests, you wait to learn what did the tests show, did they get it all? All of those pathology reports are really, really important and they are helpful, but you are waiting for them. But each result was a step forward. Then when you finish treatment, there is a little bit of a feeling like you are jumping off a cliff because suddenly the doctors are not monitoring you on a regular basis, and to be honest, it took me a really long time to use the word ‘survivor.’ That was a hard word for me. I didn’t want to count my eggs before they had hatched, so I was not using that word for a very long time. Some people use the word ‘survivor’ from the day they are diagnosed and some of us have a harder time using that term because we don’t feel like survivors until we get to that milestone where we can ask the question, ‘Are we cured?’ Triple negative breast is a very aggressive form of breast cancer, so the first two years are very important because the spread is what they are worried about, and it moves quickly. Those first two years were very difficult, and I absolutely was not ready to use the word ‘survivor.’ It took me several years. Then you eventually start to move into life, and you feel like normalcy is returning and you go back to your routine, but you never go fully back, you are just basically moving forward, and you are transformed, you are different. Once you have had a cancer diagnosis, I mean, at least for me, I will never be the same again.

BM: You have mentioned that you did yoga, and you have done it at a very high level. These days, and going forward, physically, are there any things you cannot do? Are there ways in which life will always be different?

MS: Functionally, I think I am back to where I was. There is still some chemo brain. I don’t think I am the same person. Time has taken its toll. I am aging. Generally speaking, I talked a little bit about flexibility. I now have it on both sides, which I did not have after surgery. However, it always feels different. Radiation makes permanent changes to your tissue, so I will always have tight tissue on my left side. My surgeon told me I will always have to stretch every day, not to get tight, so functionally, I am doing the same things, I am back to life, and again, I am transformed, I am just a little different.

BM: At some point you were inspired to take your cancer journey in a different direction, in effect, starting another cancer journey. Tell us about that.

MS: I think it started during my treatment, and what happened was my oncologist was really clear with me. She told me the more I move, the better I will feel. She said if I keep moving, I will reduce my fatigue, and chemotherapy fatigue is very significant. I was a rule follower, and I did everything she told me, including to move as much as I could. That’s when I learned exercise is really important during treatment. I continued with yoga. I also took advantage of some of the opportunities that were offered at the local cancer support center in Fairfax. There is an amazing support center called Life With Cancer that offered a whole host of exercise classes for people going through cancer treatment as well as long term survivors. It really helped to get my body moving. I was surrounded by other cancer survivors and that felt good because as I said, it can be very isolating, so exercise was really an important part of my journey. It wasn’t until after I finished treatment and I started taking some classes that were for survivors, that I took a class on chemo brain. I also took a class on the emotional rollercoaster of survivorship. I also took a class on nutrition. Another class on looking better after cancer. Every single class I took told us to exercise, and that really meant a lot to me. I remember going to an instructor and asked if she knew how important her exercise message was, because it helps with everything. It helps with the emotional well-being, the physical well being, it actually reduces your likelihood of recurrence in many types of cancers. The importance, the benefits of exercise really came into light for me. In addition, I had a very significant feeling that I had, at least for now, survived a life-threatening illness and I needed to make my life have meaning. I needed to do something important, and I was at a time in my life in which I wanted to leave my footprint on the world in addition to the children that I had raised. The ideas started percolating, and after some time in early 2017, I got together with a friend who was also a cancer survivor, and we started talking about how we might help. The co-founder of the organization I eventually ended up putting together, 2Unstoppable, she was a total fitness enthusiast. She’s someone who runs marathons, she’s a gym rat, she works out every day, she’s high intensity and I was someone who had fitness in and out of my life, I was a yoga person, I liked various forms of exercise, but I wasn’t so intense about it. So, we had two very different relationships with exercise, and yet it had been part of both of our cancer journeys, very much so. We started talking about what we might be able to do, and we looked back on something we had done together. When I was in treatment, I had a whole bunch of friends who asked what they could do for me. Often, I would ask them to just come walk with me, as during chemotherapy, I was a little afraid to walk alone, I was worried about losing my balance or might not feel well. So, I’d rather have someone with me, and this friend would walk with me. While we walked, we talked. I could ask her, what her lumpectomy was like, and what was radiation like? Similarly, I had had another friend I had contacted during chemotherapy, and she was also going through chemo. Even Friday morning she would come to my house, and we would walk together for a peer-to-peer conversation, so we would provide physical and emotional support to one another, and I ended up walking longer than I would have walked on my own. We had had that experience together and we realized the power of the buddy system. Research shows that if you have a fitness buddy, you are more likely to be motivated, you are more accountable, more likely to have an exercise routine, you are more likely to work harder and longer and more often. So, we put down the need for physical and emotional support, plus the research touting fitness buddies and we came up with this idea for a fitness buddy matching program. I had already started mentoring a number of women who had been diagnosed. In particular, because triple negative breast cancer is so unique and different and extra scary, when someone gets diagnosed with triple negative, they want to talk to somebody else who had triple negative, not other types of breast cancer or other types of cancer. So, I had already been experiencing the power of mentoring and peer-supporting other women who had triple negative. So, we started talking and in 2017, we founded a non-profit called 2Unstoppable, and the number ‘2’ is really about that buddy system. Over the years it has evolved in not only offering a free, online buddy matching program, which is basically like a ‘match.com’ for fitness buddies for cancer survivors and patients, but we have also gotten into education, we offer classes, and we offer an online community of women looking to stay active. So, we are working really hard now to help inspire and support women with a cancer diagnosis to get moving and stay strong.

BM: Michelle, we have talked about the side effects that were part of your breast cancer journey. With the power of exercise, what side effects can be addressed by exercise?

MS: There is a whole host of side effects that can be addressed through exercise. We have talked about chemo brain. That can be helped through exercise. We have talked about muscle tightness. Many women and men battling cancer experience bone density issues as a result of chemotherapy and other treatments. So, weight bearing exercise helps with bone density issues. We talk about balance issues tied to various types of treatment. A lot of people lose strength in their core, especially if they have had abdominal surgeries and they need to work that back in. Chemotherapy also takes an unbelievable toll on your muscle mass. One of the statistics that really got me moving personally was that I learned in the course of ten years of actual aging, all other things being equal, we will typically lose about three or four pounds of muscle mass, just from aging. You can lose that same amount of muscle mass from six months of chemotherapy. That information really got me, thinking I had lost ten years of muscle mass in just five or six months of chemotherapy. That’s why it is very important to include in the exercise, strength or resistance training. So, you need to build back that muscle. In addition, the type of side effects that are physical, there is cancer-related fatigue. This can be from your treatment, things like surgery or radiation and of course, chemotherapy that cause fatigue, but it is also just the worry of having cancer, the fear, it’s exhausting, it’s emotionally exhausting. There is this whole range of causes of what they call ‘cancer-related fatigue.’ Did you know that exercise is the number one treatment for cancer-related fatigue? It is the best way to combat that fatigue, so there is a side effect that is really helped. The other thing is just the emotional side. Anxiety and depression are incredibly common with people who have been diagnosed. It often sets in, in survivorship, even more so than during treatment. That anxiety and depression can also be treated by exercise, by getting the adrenalin going in your body, getting those endorphins going, that can be really helpful. So, it’s physical, it’s fatigue, it’s emotional. All those are side effects that can be addressed with exercise, and this can be a recovery mode where you are trying to get them back from it and it helps to mitigate those side effects while you’re in treatment. For example, if you are lucky enough to have a little time before a surgery, they now do something called ‘pre-hab,’ where a physical therapist can work with you with exercises to prepare you for surgery, so there is less impact on your body when you have surgery.

BM: Michelle, there are many different types of cancer, we can’t go through all of them type by type, but generally speaking, would you say safe exercise is safe for patients during treatment? We have talked about before treatment and after, but what about during treatment? Is it safe at that time?

MS: Every case is different, every person’s case is different, and every cancer is different, every treatment is different. So, we always say that you need to check with your doctor. You should always get a doctor’s clearance for any type of exercise regimen you are considering, before you get started. And you need to work with a cancer-certified fitness professional. There are actually certifications in which the professional is trained to work with the cancer patient or survivor. This way they are familiar with the treatment you might be going through, but also the side effects that come with. That helps to make it safe. In general, there is a safe way for everyone to exercise during treatment and after treatment, but you have to get some guidance. You have to know what you are doing. Our site, 2Unstoppable.org, has a whole section called Resources, with a lot of information and guidance to help you find that for yourself, and again, you always want to ask your doctor. In terms of what types of cancers are most impacted, which ones are safest, there are 13 types of cancers where it is demonstrated through research that exercise will help combat the side effects, reduce recurrence, increase survival rates. The top three, breast cancer is at the top. So, for breast cancer patients, for those women who exercise regularly, after a cancer diagnosis, have a 40 percent better survival rate. They are 40 to 50 percent less likely to have recurrence and similar numbers less likely to die from related causes. For example, cancer treatment can affect your heart, so if you can work on your heart health, that will prevent problems later on, that are side effects of your cancer that can cause health problems later on.

BM: Speaking of exercise, we can’t go through the entire list, because there are many types of cancers, many types of side effects, each one is their own equation, but if you could pick off the top of the list, just to give listeners and viewers an idea, give us an idea of a couple of exercises you would recommend.

MS: The general guidelines from the American Cancer Society call for a target of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week. Interestingly enough, that is the same recommendation for the general population. So, every adult should be shooting for a similar exercise goal. How does that break down? That can be a pair of 75-minute workouts, it can five workouts of 30 minutes. What does moderate to vigorous mean? It means you can talk, but maybe you can’t sing. You can get your heart rate up a little bit, but you don’t have to be huffing and puffing. You don’t have to be sweating in the gum. It’s just a way to get moving. In addition, we strongly recommend a couple of times a week including some strength and resistance work. Some sort of weight bearing exercise, doing some strength training, again, everyone is different, so of course you need to make some accommodations. Within those guidelines, I do always tell everyone, this is all or nothing. Two minutes is better than zero minutes. So, if you can’t get the 150 minutes in because I know it can sound daunting, just get in what you can. Every minute that you are not on the couch, every minute you are moving is a good minute of exercise. There are some modifications on the recommendations. If you are in heavy treatment, instead of 150 minutes, 75 minutes can be okay, and if there is a day when you can’t even walk to the mailbox, take a day off. It’s okay. You don’t have to push yourself beyond your limits, just do what you can when you can. The other thing people often ask is, what is the best form of exercise? The answer is, the best form of exercise is the one you’re going to do. If you love belly dancing, then that’s what you should do. I have tried it. It is very fun and liberating and it is a great workout. If you love yoga, there are all different types of yoga. Find one that works for you. If love walking, walking is amazing really impactful form of exercise. It often gets you outside. It can be what’s called a mindful meditation, it gets you out among nature, it might even be social, so walking can be a great form of exercise. If you love to run, go at it. Whatever works for you is the best exercise for you to do because that is the one you are going to keep doing. We’re not talking about exercising for a week or two; we’re talking about getting your body moving for the rest of your life.

BM: A lot of the forms of exercise that you have referenced here are things that a lot of people perform whether they are on a cancer journey or not; but your organization, 2Unstoppable, what does it preach to cancer patients that is unique to cancer patients?

MS: So, 2Unstoppable is unique in a number of ways. When it was founded in 2017, we did a bit of research. What we learned was, there are organizations that have exercise classes to cancer patients and survivors, if you are lucky enough to live near a facility that offers them or a hospital that offers amazing cancer exercise programs out there. There are fitness buddy matching programs out there, there is a way to find a fitness buddy; but there is no program offering fitness buddies for the cancer community, specifically. The benefit of that is that you are both working on some of the same goals, and you can a fitness buddy that works best for you, someone who likes the same kind of exercise as you or has the same kind of diagnosis as you or maybe they are at the same stage of life as you are, or perhaps they are in the same geographic location as you, and that’s important. You can a fitness buddy for you through 2Unstoppable and that’s unique. As I said, cancer can be very isolating, and the social component is very, very important. Nobody gets it like somebody else who has had cancer, so that is something that we offer that is definitely unique. Another thing that we are doing that is unique is we have launched a really successful, wildly successful program called 2UnstoppableStrong, which is a group progressive exercise program, specifically targeted for women who have had a cancer diagnosis, and we have different groups and different sessions. Some of them are for people who are in the first year after completing treatment, so they have completed active treatment, but they are still within that first year. As I said, that’s a year when you feel like you are jumping off a cliff and it’s a scary time. It’s also a time when the doctors are done providing your treatment and you are looking to what you can do to take control. So, 2UnstoppableStrong is offered to a group of women who have completed treatment. We also have a special session we offer for women who have metastatic cancer because those women need a different set of accommodations and a different set of modifications, and they have a different set of goals. There are lots of different programs like that, but it is a progressive program. A lot of cancer centers offer a drop-in kind of class so people don’t have to make a commitment, but when you do a progressive class, they are all growing together and improving your capabilities to get together, and you can see those results.

BM: Michelle, we are going to bring this to a conclusion, but I want to conclude this with the following question. Your website, 2Unstoppable.org, lists a whole bunch of reasons to exercise, but if you could pluck from all those reasons one that is the most important reason, one overarching reason that you would like to leave a listener or viewer with, what would it be?

MS: The most important and the best reason to exercise is the reason that gets you moving. So, it’s whatever puts the fire under your belly. Whether it is to combat the side effects, to help with your recovery, to reduce your chances of recurrence, to increase your chances of survival, to reduce your own anxiety, to reduce your own fatigue, to get back your muscle mass, whatever your reason is, that’s the best reason to exercise, because that’s the one that is going to keep you moving.

BM: Fantastic. Michelle, just a wealth of information from you and again, you have brought a different approach to the cancer journey, one that differs from all our other interviews and that all by itself makes this interview very significant because it can resonate with a lot of people, and again, if somebody is watching or listening right now, and thankfully they are not in the middle of a cancer journey, they may know somebody who is, and this can benefit them. Michelle, thanks so much for being with us.

MS: Thanks for having me. Keep moving and stay strong.

BM: That’s going to wrap up this segment of Cancer Interviews. We hope what you heard can be beneficial. Until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.

Support Groups…

https://www.2Unstoppable.org

SHOW NOTES

TITLE: Michelle Stravitz, Triple Negative Breast Cancer Survivor – Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Aided by a procedure that included 20 weeks of chemotherapy, Michelle Stravitz survived triple negative breast cancer, then co-founded 2Unstoppable.org, which advocates the inclusion of exercise in the cancer journey. #breastcancer #triplenegativebreastcancer #cancerandexercise #2unstoppable.org #movewithus #21daychallenges