CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — She's a realtor.
She has a strong faith.
And she is a stage four metastatic breast cancer survivor.
Missie Trejo has no family history of breast cancer. However, after swelling under her arms led to a doctor's visit and screening, she quickly realized nothing would be normal in her life again.
"I didn't have the normal side effects that I guess most women do where they feel something right away, they know they have a lump in their breast," said Trejo.
In 2018, at the age of 49, Missie Trejo discovered horrible boils underneath her arms.
"I went to the doctor several times," said Trejo. "He was like 'It's deodorant. Change your deodorant, your cream, your laundry.' I was breaking out in a rash."
After pushing her doctor for a referral, she finally got together enough money to pay for a mammogram.
Trejo said, "I remember looking at the techs. And they were looking at the images, and they were having to redo the images, and you could just see in their face the expression. And I'm just laying there just looking over and 'Oh this is not good!'"
Doctors discovered a tumor in her right breast. But the trouble didn't end there: the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
An action plan was devised: chemo.
But during a later scan, the doctors realized Trejo's cancer had spread to the bone above her eye. She was then put on radiation therapy when the doctors discovered something weird.
Her markers disappeared.
"He had to go in blind to pull out the tissue.," Trejo said of her tumor removal surgery. "And he did tell me there was probably a risk of that because they may not get all the cancer cells. Two weeks later, I had to go back in because he did not get all the cancer cells, and he had to reopen me and take it out. But the tumor was completely gone."
The doctors told Trejo that the tumor had most likely grown over the course of five years.
Today, Trejo wants to make sure women start screening earlier than what is currently recommended.
"Until it happens to you or someone close to you, you don't understand how common this disease is," she said.
Trejo knows the cancer could come back some day, but she is not letting it dictate her life.
And why should she? After all, she's busy promoting First Friday, a Christus Spohn organization that connects women like herself with the mammograms they need.
You can keep up with First Friday on Facebook and donate to their cause at this link here.
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