Laura Stabell

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.


My 9 month journey with breast cancer began on Halloween, 2016.  After finding the lump myself, the next two weeks were filled with doctors, tests and diagnosis.  The clinical terms for my cancer are grade 2, stage IIB or IIIA invasive ductal carcinoma. The grade 2 means intermediate on the aggressive scale and the staging means that it is in my lymph nodes. Stage IIIA means more lymph nodes. The definite stage will hopefully be determined by PET scan this week.


My cancer has also been diagnosed as triple negative. This means that it does not have the three receptors (estrogen, progesterone or HER2 protein) that research has determine can "feed" some cancers. If any of these were positive, my treatment would have included therapies that block these receptors. Since they are negative, I can't benefit from any of the drugs or hormone therapies that have been developed at this point. 


The treatment plan will begin with chemotherapy. I'll have four treatments, once every two weeks, of AC(adriamycin and cytoxin). Then I will have 12 treatments, once weekly of Taxol. So chemo will last about five months. After a few weeks to recover, I'll have surgery to remove what's left of the tumor. Again after recovering from surgery, I will begin probably 6 weeks of daily radiation. 


I will use this site to keep everyone informed and journal my feelings and thoughts. I would love to hear from all of you. I intend to have a positive attitude through this battle. An Aggie friend coined my cancer fight for me. I'm going to BTHO(for you non-aggies that means Beat the Hell out of) cancer. Your thoughts and prayers along the way will help so much.