What it feels like to receive a breast cancer diagnosis: shock, denial, and the strange normal of the early days. Personal reflection and coping tips.

Nothing can prepare you to see this sentence in a medical report: “You have breast cancer.” I was in the middle of a work meeting when I got a notification on my phone telling me that my breast biopsy resultswere available. Being the anxious person I am, of course I opened it right away, and when I read that sentence, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience—almost like a dream (or nightmare, if you prefer). From that moment on, nothing else felt real for a while. I