Pregnant Mom With Stage 4 Breast Cancer Beats The Odds After Given 6 Months To Live — 'Over A Dozen Tumors Covered My Liver'
She hopes her story will save other women's lives.
lindsey.gritton / Instagram Lindsey Parr Gritton is the mom to two daughters under the age of two, and she’s also a cancer survivor. Gritton is an outspoken advocate, openly sharing her journey across social media to raise awareness about diagnosing breast cancer.
The loving mom was pregnant and had Stage 4 breast cancer.
Gritton discovered she had terminal breast cancer when she was 29 years old and 35 weeks pregnant with her second baby. She relayed the story of her diagnosis in a TikTok post, explaining that she was 33 weeks along in her pregnancy when she noticed a small lump “about the size of a marble.” She felt a burning sensation where the lump was located, so she went to her OB-GYN to make sure everything was okay.
Gritton’s doctor told her the lump was a clogged duct and prescribed antibiotics. But Gritton’s instinct told her otherwise, as she explained it, “I’ve had a clogged duct before. I know what they feel like. It’s definitely not that.”
She requested an ultrasound, which she received a couple of days after her initial appointment.
“Immediately with the ultrasound, I knew something was not right,” Gritton said. “The ultrasound tech’s face, the look on her face — I will never forget. She had the blankest look on her face; she kept going over [the lump] constantly with her wand… I just had a gut feeling.”
A few days later, Gritton went in for a biopsy, only to find out she had “invasive ductal carcinoma, HER2 positive, estrogen positive cancer… a 3-centimeter lump” in her breast. “I had a pretty large swollen lymph node, that was multiple lymph nodes stuck together,” Gritton explained. “At the time, I did not know that it had spread.”
Gritton gave birth to her “healthy, precious” daughter prematurely, at 37 weeks, then got a PET scan, which revealed that the cancer had spread to her liver.
‘There were over a dozen tumors in my liver,’ the mom discovered after her baby was born. ‘I did not have any symptoms of this.’
In a separate TikTok post, Gritton described her battle against her terminal cancer diagnosis. She completed 8 rounds of chemo, noting, “We knew the chemo was working, like, halfway through, because it was shrinking the tumors. Then, at the end of chemo, I wasn’t expecting it, but that’s when they found out the cancer was gone. There was nothing there, the PET scan came back with nothing on it.”
“We were super excited about that,” she said, noting that they “didn’t know how long her remission was going to last.”
Gritton had a lumpectomy, where the tumor was removed, along with having several lymph nodes removed and tested for cancer.
“They didn’t find any remaining cancer cells anywhere,” she said. “I ended up doing 32 rounds of radiation, full breast radiation, and that was pretty much it. That ended in March and then ever since then, I’ve had scans every, like, three to four months to make sure I’m cancer-free.”
Gritton explained that she’s still in immunotherapy treatment, and “will be on that for a while. I don’t know how long; some people are on it for life, some people get off sooner.” She stands firmly in the present moment, saying, “I just have to kinda play it by ear and see, but so far, so good. I’m still cancer-free.”
As Gritton shared in an Instagram post during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, “I never thought in a million years I would be diagnosed with cancer. I just didn’t think it would happen to me… but cancer doesn’t care.”
She urged her followers to complete monthly checks, advising them to get an ultrasound if they feel like something is wrong.
“Young women shouldn’t be finding this disease so late and dying from it. I will fight every day to be heard, to raise awareness, and save lives,” she concluded. Gritton is using her voice and telling her story, to ensure that the future of the disease changes for those to come.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers parenting, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.