Jessica Jordan, Top Tri for a Cure Fundraiser in 2017

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Jessica Jordan was 34 when she was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. Her mother passed away soon after she finished radiation. To honor her mother's memory, Jessica completed the Try for a Cure in July of 2017, and she was this year's top fundraiser, breaking her goal by $44,000. That's pretty impressive.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah, it was a pretty amazing experience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting that you were able to turn something that really was for most people and I'm sure for you also a very difficult experience. Two things that were very difficult, breast cancer and your mother passing away into something important and meaningful in a fairly short period of time.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah, it was a short period of time. It was only a couple months after my mom passed that I was going through actually some emails of hers and somehow I thought of the trifer care and I remembered that I had signed up for it. And one of the last things my mom and I had talked about was trying to raise money for cancer research. And I was in such. I mean, getting through cancer and then being hit by losing somebody so important to me. I had thought cancer was one of the toughest things I'd ever gone through. And my mom used to always say, you know, things can always be worse. And I felt like I was faced all of a sudden with something that felt so much worse. I actually missed the days of just dealing with chemo because that seemed easier than what I was faced with, with losing my mom. So suddenly I really needed some kind of outlet. I knew my family needed some kind of outlet and we were in a really bad place. I said to my sister, I don't have anything left to deal with this kind of enormous loss. I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. And I felt like I just wanted to give up because I had been so positive through treatment and through my whole journey with cancer. And now my mom's not here. So I went through a couple of months of being really, really in a dark place and really having a hard time. And I looked through some of my mom's emails and found that I had gotten into the trive for a cure. And all of a sudden, I didn't even really plan it. I just thought, you know what? I'll sign up and I'll worry about the training and everything later. I don't know how I'm going to do that, because the last time I had run, I had gone into the hospital, I'd run three miles, and I had kind of gone too hard. So I was kind of nervous about just the training aspect of it. But I figured I'd start training, it would get me out, and I'd worry about that later. And we were able to write a page about what our inspiration was for doing the race. And I just started writing about my mom and about how wonderful our relationship was and why I wanted to raise money for this cause. And I wanted to do it in honor of her and feel like I was doing it with her. And I came home and I said to my husband, I said, I'm going to do the try for a cure this year. I just signed up. And he said, okay, good for you. That's great. And I said. And I looked into who the person that raised the most donations last year, and I said, it was $20,000, so I want to raise $20,001. And he looked at me, and I don't know if I gave him a look of like, that's it. I'm doing it. Because he looked at me kind of like, okay, I don't know about this. And he's been so supportive. And he just said. I said, no, I want to do it, and I want to do it this year. And he said, okay. And that was it. I started seeing. I told my story, and I immediately started seeing money being raised, and I started to feel something again, started to feel that positivity again that I had kind of, you know, really lost after my mom passed.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did it feel as if somebody had moved the finish line on you?

Jessica Jordan:

That's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was two Months after I finished radiation, that my mom passed away. And I literally remember. I remember the day that she passed. I remember walking out to see Connor, and we were watching one of the playoff football games, and it was the new year. It was two weeks into the new year. It was January 14th, and I was finally ready to say, that's it with past. My mom always said, let's move forward. We put enough towards cancer. Let's move forward. And I was ready to be done with that. Like you said, I was ready. I crossed that finish line. I was ready to be done. I was ready to move forward. And the day she passed, I remember looking at my husband, and we kind of gave each other this smile. And I'll never forget it, because it was almost like a moment that we had where everything's okay now. We got through all of that. And literally that same moment, my cousin walked in to tell me that something had happened to my mother. And it all started all over again. So, yeah, it's been brutal. Brutally hard, really. Really. Two of the toughest things I think you could ever deal with literally simultaneously. And they were both so unexpected. That's the crazy part. I was 34 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Very healthy, young, wasn't genetic, have no idea where it came from. And my mom passed of a pulmonary embolism. So neither of these made sense. I think it's human nature to kind of want to feel like if I hadn't done this, then this wouldn't have happened. If only I had done this differently, then maybe I wouldn't have gotten cancer, you know, or there's some kind of way to rationalize somebody passing like that. And what this has proven is that we just have no control of our lives. My mom used to always say, you never know what tomorrow's gonna bring. And she taught me so many lessons. But I think one of the biggest lessons she taught me was that how. You know, how true that really is. I mean, I was worried about myself for a year, she was worried about me for a year, and now she's not here. So, cancer or no cancer, none of us have any certainty of what tomorrow brings. And that's kind of how I choose to live my life now. It's not in fear, but knowing that today I'm lucky.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is all still very fresh. I mean, this. So your mother passed away in January of 2017?

Jessica Jordan:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So within the last year. It hasn't even been a year, as you and I are talking. And then you yourself, you were diagnosed just a little about two years ago.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah, almost exactly two years ago. February 24th.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And that doesn't even really feel. I mean, I know when I was diagnosed with cancer that the time immediately afterwards, it kind of all sped up because you're just doing all the stuff you need to do, and then you put your head up, and all of a sudden you look six months has passed or a year has passed.

Jessica Jordan:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so this, for you is all so. Still, so present.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah. It honestly, time is a weird thing. It really is. Sometimes being diagnosed with cancer seems like it was 100 years ago. Like, that was a different life. That was a different period. You start to forget, and you probably experience this, too. You start to forget kind of some of those things that you went through in other ways. It seems like it was just three seconds ago. It's the same thing with my mom. I don't think that. I think that these things, too, are both such shocking things that it takes you so long just to even realize that they happened. I don't know if I've really even fully realized that these two things have really happened. I wake up every morning, I have to kind of say, yep, you had cancer. That happened, and yet Mom's not here. That's true. And I have to kind of remind myself that these things actually happened. And I don't even feel like I know. You know, I've said this a few times. I don't feel like I really remember who I was before all of this. It changes you so profoundly. I just. I feel like I look at that person with the long hair and, you know, just completely, you know, no idea what cancer's like or what real loss is like. And I almost wanted to pat her on the back and say, it's okay. You know, like, it just. It changes you so profoundly that I just look at everything differently now. But at the same time, I really don't know if a lot of this has really even hit me. I'm just now starting to feel like in the last couple of weeks, more emotion. I was in such shock that now I'm starting to feel more emotion when I think about mother, because I'm really starting to realize that she's not with us. And I've never experienced anything like that before, where time just. It's just a crazy thing,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you know? It's interesting because I know going through my own breast cancer, part of what I needed to do was to be positive and to be strong and to move forward in a direction of healing. And I think when you're doing that it almost shuts down some of the necessary processes of, I don't know, grieving the person you once were.

Jessica Jordan:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I was just. You know, this was. For me, I can't remember how many years now, but not that long ago. Maybe three, four. And the other day, I actually started to tear up thinking about my breast cancer. I'm like, wow, where did that come from? Yeah. So it's interesting that you can think that you have dealt with stuff and then it's there. It's just, like, below the surface.

Jessica Jordan:

It is. And I. Yeah, right after I was diagnosed, I started seeing a therapist. And thank gosh, because everything got so much crazier. I'm so glad I've had her. But I said to her at one point, I said, you know, I'm worried about myself because I'm not crying. I'm not emotional. Like, what is that? Why am I not crying every single day? Why am I not curled up in a ball, you know? Because that's what I would have thought if something like this happened to me, let alone both things. And what I've realized is that you can feel so many different emotions and be grieving so, so much. But it doesn't mean that you're necessarily crying all the time. You can grieve in so many different ways, and that's just one emotion. But I do find that it is still. You know, there are times where something will happen, something will spark an emotion. I didn't even. It'll be the strangest thing that I wouldn't have expected, and suddenly I'm so emotional, and something that you would think would make you really emotional. I'm fine. So I don't know if it's kind of a coping mechanism, but it's there. It just comes out in these odd, odd times. But I do think that it's. It's a great point that you had. I think that we don't know. Everything happens so fast. When you're diagnosed. You don't have the time to even think about mourning who you were, because you're trying to figure out what to do for the next thing and how to get through this next period. And you're in such a state of just trying to fix the situation that you never think about the fact that I just ended a chapter of my life. I just said goodbye to the person that I was all of those years of not having to deal with this. Because I think that what a lot of people don't realize when you are diagnosed with cancer and you start to look like yourself again after treatment, and you start to feel like yourself again. Everybody kind of says, oh, well, you're. I think there's this mentality of, oh, you got through it. You're done with it. And I think, because I've been very positive through my own diagnosis as well, I think maybe that's been. It's been forgotten. That or I didn't realize this either, to be fair. I didn't realize this before cancer, how much was involved with trying to just make sure that this doesn't happen again. But every day is. You know, I'm still taking medication. I'm still going to get blood work every three weeks. I will be on this medication for 10 years. I'm getting mammograms and MRIs and dealing with the emotional. It's the emotional piece that lasts longer than the treatment itself. And I think that once you start to look and feel like yourself, there's this sense of, oh, now everything's okay again. And it's. I mean, it's a lifelong change. This is. For the rest of my life. I will always have this on the back burner of something that I'm thinking about. What if that ache or pain isn't just an ache or pain? I think it's the getting through it mentally that ends up being the longest journey of all of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This all happened too coincidentally, around the time that you were preparing for your wedding.

Jessica Jordan:

Yes. That's how I found it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah. I always say my wedding saved my life. It's kind of really crazy. I was really stressed out. Connor and I got married the day after Christmas in 2015, and I wanted to start a family very soon. And I kind of laugh at that now because I thought I had this whole plan figured out, right? We're gonna get married. I'm gonna have kids. We're gonna get a house. It's gonna be all my ducks in a row. And it all changed so quickly. Two weeks. Two months. Excuse me. Two months after we were engaged, I was planning the wedding, and we were trying to do a really quick turnaround. Eight months of planning. And I was really busy with work, so I was stressed out. And I woke up in the middle of the night feeling anxious. So I was rubbing this dress out of my chest, and I felt something. And it was something I never felt before. And I thought it was almost a piece of my bone because it was really. It didn't really move when I touched it. But I was also stressed out. So I thought, jess, you know, you're anxious this is why you're doing this anyway, you know, just wake up in the morning. If you still feel it, then call your doctor. Well, I woke up in the morning, I still felt it. So I called my doctor. And I remember sitting in her office and I was trying to find it again. I couldn't find it. And I had this moment of thinking, oh my gosh, you're wasting everyone's time. You don't have the time to be out here. She's gonna think you're crazy because you can't even find it. And you're just anxious because you've got a lot going on. And she came in and I kind of apologized. I said, I'm sorry, I feel like I'm kind of overreacting. And when she felt it, that's when I started to think maybe something was not right. I looked into, I did some research on my own, and I know that there's benign cysts that you can have. So I thought, well, maybe that's all it is. And so I went in there, I got a mammogram, and I thought, that's probably all it is. And when they ruled that out and said they wanted to do a biopsy that day, I remember that was the moment that I went into the bathroom and I started to really get emotional and lose it. And I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, what if this is. What if you have cancer? What if this really is cancer? And then, as I'm sure you know, you have to wait like five days to seven days to hear the results, which is the longest five to seven days of your entire life. And when they called and said that it was something I needed to come in for, Connor and I still were under the impression that it wasn't the way that they had said it. They didn't think it was invasive. So I didn't think it was going to be anything too bad. I thought I could just get it removed. We had planned to go out to breakfast the next day after this appointment when we were thinking about where we're going to go to breakfast. And we went in there and sat down and she said, it's serious. And I said, you know, I almost said, and I'm sure you probably felt the same thing. It's like this beautiful music that's playing and then all of a sudden it just stops and you hear that and it's like your whole life just goes on pause. And I said, is it breast cancer? And she said, yes. And that was ended up being a 7 hour day. Of MRIs and blood work and meeting a team that's talking to me about things that I never thought I'd be talking about and trying to figure out how to tell my family. That was the biggest thing that came to my mind is how do I tell my mother? How do I say cancer and not make it sound like a big deal? Like, how do I say that and say, oh, don't worry about it? I'm like, is there another word for cancer that I can use? Because she worried about everything. So. So I really didn't know how. That was my biggest focus, was how do I pull myself together and call our families and tell them not to worry when I don't have the answers for them that they're gonna want right now? Because we still didn't know a lot.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's funny that that's the thing that we worry about. Yeah. That we worry more about how it's gonna impact other people, I think. Which I think is probably fairly common, actually, especially among women. Yes. They're so much more worried about how this is going to impact everyone around them than they are able to worry about themselves.

Jessica Jordan:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maybe that's a good thing.

Jessica Jordan:

I think it's a good distraction, to be honest.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Exactly.

Jessica Jordan:

I didn't have time to really think about what if this is really, like, how bad could this possibly be? Because I was so concerned with how to relay the information to my family and my friends, who, God love them, I sent a text message to them because I couldn't call everyone and talk to them on and give them the time that I knew that they deserved. So I had to send a text message. I can't imagine me on the other end of a text message from one of my friends saying that they have breast cancer. But it's just as, you know, it's so overwhelming that you can really only put so much energy into every single individual thing. And at that point, it was just, we need to figure out the game plan. Do I need chemo? Do I need radiation? Do I need a lumpectomy, a double mastectomy? What are we talking here? And those are all things that at that point, I still didn't know.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, there's a lot of processing that when you tell somebody some sort of news, they will need to do for themselves. And so if you call every person, you're going to get everybody else's process, which is completely legitimate.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But also, you need to retain a little bit of your own self to care for yourself.

Jessica Jordan:

It's a very good point.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, you need to be able to triage almost like, okay, I'm going to talk to these people in person. These people get a phone call, these people get a text message. Maybe these people get an email.

Jessica Jordan:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it's not that you don't care about all these various friends and family. You just. Everybody wants to tell you how they feel about it.

Jessica Jordan:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Which is great. And hard.

Jessica Jordan:

It is hard. And I feel like sometimes it can also add to your anxiety because certain people you tell, and God love them, they get so nervous, they ask all these questions that you didn't think about and the next thing you know you're going, oh my gosh, should I have thought about that? What if that is the case? I don't know. So it kind of adds to sometimes an already anxiety, obviously an anxiety producing situation. And I think that's one of the hardest things too is not letting other people's fears and thoughts or ideas become something that you're taking on as your own. Because you already have so many of your own to try and to figure out during a time like that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's, I think that that's a really, that's a really important point. It might actually, in some ways the fact that we have access to so much information now may not be the best thing because it does actually cause you to second guess yourself. And the worst thing you can do when you're trying to set up a treatment plan is second guess. Because there is no perfect option.

Jessica Jordan:

No. And they don't tell you that. I mean you never, not that anybody would ever tell you this, but I always thought that, I always had this idea that if you were diagnosed with something serious, the doctors would just say, okay, here's exactly what you need to do. So I went in there and they said that I'm like, alright, so what exactly do I need to do? Just fix it. And there's no perfect recipe. It's more like, here are your options, let me know which one you would like to move forward with. And I wasn't prepared for that. I don't think a lot of people are. We're not the experts. But you have to almost become an expert and you do have to do your own research, which can be kind of a long rabbit hole to fall into because that kind of starts to address other issues that you didn't think about or other problems that might be yours or might not be or other people's. One thing that I stopped getting involved in is other people writing their own stories or their own experiences. Because I started to be convinced that all of those were going to be my story and my experience. And I couldn't really separate reality from what I thought might happen or what happened to somebody else. I had to constantly say, is this my diagnosis? Is this my situation? And lots of times it wasn't. But if you really do. I stopped reading anything, really, at this point. I'm lucky enough I have a friend who's an oncologist, so I just call her, or I know the trusted sites to go to, but no longer do I just randomly Google something. Because you'll almost always find the answer that you don't want. If you're looking for something and you're worried about it, you're gonna surely find that that's inevitably what's gonna happen. So I think that's a huge point, is to just kind of refrain from, there's almost too much information out there now. There really is. And that really can be really hard when you're going through such a serious diagnosis.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's all these things that we're talking about, I think also that makes Try for a Cure so powerful because so many people are in that survivor wave of participants that you look around and you think, that person went through this, that person went through this, this person went through this. Or you look at the people who are impacted by cancer in other ways, and you think, she has a sister, she has a mother, and even though you may not have exactly the same experience, it's kind of interesting to be part of that bigger group now. Absolutely.

Jessica Jordan:

It was actually a really emotional moment, too. I did the 5k for the try for a cure too. And I stood on the line and they had a thing for the survivors and they start first. And there weren't that many of us and everybody else is kind of supporting us, but they'd all had some kind of cancer related story. And my friend caught up to me because she ran it with me, and I looked at her and I said, I can't believe that I'm running in this wave. And she said, I still can't either. And there was just this moment of, I've always. I've been a competitive runner since I was 11 years old, and to be running along with other women who didn't have their hair, and my hair was just growing back, and now to be running on just a totally different experience. You know, I used to always love to support causes like this, but I had become the cause. And that was one of a really pivotal moment for me to say, oh, my gosh I'm on the other side of this now. I'm not just cheering these women on. I am one of these women. So the try for a cure is just, it's incredible for so many ways, not only what it raises money for, but yeah, you start to look around and you see all of these people that have been affected in some way, shape or form. A lot of them are young. And when I came to Maine and I started my treatment here, I felt like I was the only 34 year old woman with breast cancer in Maine. And I remember saying that to a nurse. I said, am I the youngest woman in Maine to ever have breast cancer? And she said, oh no, that's not good that you think that. She said, you guys just don't come in at the same time. She said, there's actually quite a few of them. So we started a group where we would meet every week and we would just talk about all the things that none of our other 34 year old friends could talk about or could relate to. And God loved them, they tried. It wasn't that they didn't care, but there's just things that happen with a diagnosis like this. Different side effects, different ailments, different emotional stressors. That is not common for a young 30 year old woman to be going through. And that's hard as well. When you start to think, why me? What did I do wrong? That was one thing that I really struggled with was that I really felt almost like, I almost felt like I was ashamed when I was first diagnosed because all these other women were having babies and doing all, you know, getting married, getting engaged, buying houses, doing all the things that they should be doing. And I was at home bald and going through treatment and really not recognizing myself emotionally or physically. And to do that as a 34 year old woman before you've really even started your life with someone presents so many different challenges that a lot of women my age couldn't relate to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I interviewed Rebecca Falzano a few years ago. She's the editor in chief of our magazines and she had lung cancer and she was not a smoker. And this was before she got married, but she went through this with her now husband and they now have two children. And that was something, this was before I went through cancer myself. And that was something that really struck me that, you know, this is, we all go through the standard life transitions, you know, having a partner, maybe having children, going through our careers, but none of us think that somewhere along the line I'm going to deal with a Catastrophic illness. Because that's somehow. Seems like it's gonna be in the future somewhere.

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah. Yeah. It's hard for me, especially, because I was always aware of the different holistic things you could do for preventative medicine. And kind of, if you look on a sheet of paper and this always gets me, and you look at all the things that they say increase your risk for breast cancer, every single one of them are one that I am on the other end. You know, eat healthy, make sure you maintain a good weight, exercise. They talk about, you know, turmeric and all these different vitamins you can take. All things that people would make fun of me because my friends. Because they'd be like, are you drinking the turmeric tea again? I'm like, you know, it's a cancer fighter. And this was before I got cancer. So there's just no rhyme or reason for it. And that can be sometimes the hardest thing, you know, you do for me. It's hard sometimes seeing people who don't take care of themselves, who have never thought of this before, and they'll probably live to be 105, they're fine. And so it's kind of like you feel a little slighted because you've worked your whole life to try to do the right thing, and now all of a sudden, you're put into this population that nobody wants to be a part of. And, you know, I always had people say during treatment, and I really appreciated them saying it, but they'd say, you're so brave to be doing this. And I'd always kind of smile a little bit and say, well, what's the alternative? And they said, well, I don't think I could do it. And I would say, well, the will to live is pretty strong. If they had given me another outlet or another choice, trust me, I would have gone with that. I wouldn't have done chemo and radiation. But when you're presented with a situation of this is what you have to do, you do it, and somehow you get through it, and you realize that things you worried about before were really laughable things to worry about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You moved back to Maine.

Jessica Jordan:

I did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And had a chance to spend time with your mother before she passed away really suddenly.

Jessica Jordan:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's kind of interesting that that worked out that way, because here you are with a different life, proceeding down a different path, and potentially, you know, just having the same kind of ongoing relationship with your parents that you'd always had, which was good. But you made a different choice, and it gave you some really precious Time,

Jessica Jordan:

Yeah, it's really that one. That part of cancer. I've said to my sister, I said, I'm actually grateful for cancer in that way, because never in my life would I have been able to take the time off of work and been in a situation where I was relying on my moms. So I was with her for six months consistently, and we became closer, and we told each other how much we loved each other and how much we cared about each other because of everything that had been going on. So, ironically, when she passed, I didn't feel like there was anything I hadn't said to her, because we said it all because of everything I was going through. And we spent genuine time together for six months before she passed. So I don't have any regrets in that way. And if it hadn't been for cancer, that never would have been possible. So things do have an interest. Everything in my life is so. It's one emotion coupled by the exact opposite emotion. You know, here I am. I'm so grateful to be alive. I'm so grateful that I made it through cancer. But at the same time, my mom's not here. Everything that I've been going through has this alternative feeling. And I think cancer is the same thing. I'm so angry that I got it, and I wish I had never had to go through it. But at the same time, it allowed me to be close to my mom for that period of time. It allowed us to say things together that we might not have said before. I have emails from her that she wrote to me, that we wrote to each other that I now can always have that I wouldn't have had before. I've met amazing, amazing people in the community. I mean, we raised $64,000 for cancer research. There's a silver lining that can be found in every terrible situation. And I do feel like with everything that I've been so upset about and that I wish hadn't happened on the other side of it, there has been a lot of beautiful things that have come from it as well, and those are the things that I try to focus on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think it's really important that you have raised this money for cancer research, and here's why. Because cancer is impacting people at a younger age. It's impacting young, healthy people, and we don't have reasons for it, and we don't have great screening tests for it. And people need to stop feeling guilty about getting something that possibly has underlying reasons that we don't know enough about yet. And the only way we're going to figure this out is by putting money into research. And the only way we're going to be able to do that is to have people like you raising the money. So it's a very important thing you've done.

Jessica Jordan:

Thank you very much. It's been one of the most amazing experiences I've ever been part of.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your coming in and sharing your story with us. I've been speaking with Jessica Jordan, who was 34 when she was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer and her mother passed soon after she finished radiation. To honor her mother's memory, she completed Try for a Cure last July and was that year's top fundraiser, breaking her goal by $44,000. Thank you for coming in and for all the good work you're doing.

Jessica Jordan:

Thank you very much. It was an honor.