Angela Pohlwas crushing her running goals. The 47-year-old from Chardon, Ohio, had run 55 half-marathons and 13 marathons and was training to get even faster. “I was running the best I’ve ever run in my life,” says the mom of two. “I had set personal records in every single distance, from the mile to the marathon.”
It never occurred to her that something could be wrong inside her body. She not only took care of herself — “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I have good dietary habits” — but she also occasionally performed self-checks for breast cancer.
A few years before, doctors had ordered a sonogram after seeing something suspicious in a mammogram. But Pohl wasn’t worried. “They told me, ‘It looks fine, it’s just dense. Keep a watch on it.’ "
Plus, Pohl figured she was “safe” because she had no family history or genetic markers. “I wrongly assumed thatbreast canceris only something that is passed down in your family,” she says.
In early 2020 she started noticing some changes during a self-check: the breast tissue seemed to be getting more dense. But she didn’t call her doctor, saying she was in “pure denial.”
“I just kept saying, ‘It doesn’t feel that different from before, I think it’s okay,'” she recalls. “There’s always some excuse not to book an appointment.”
Suddenly the pandemic hit and everyone was in lockdown. But even when restrictions lifted, Pohl steered clear of hospitals for the next 6 months. “I didn’t want to go anywhere indoors — let alone to a medical facility where they were telling us that there were people dying and that you might catch it.”
What made her screening seem like even less of a priority was that she felt so strong. “I didn’t feel sick at all,” she says. “How could I possibly be running the best in my life and have cancer?”
By the time she finally got screened in December 2020, it had been nearly a year since she had first noticed the breast changes. On January 4, 2021, she was diagnosed with HER-2 breast cancer, stage 3. The aggressive form had quickly spread to her chest wall and skin, likely because it wasn’t caught earlier.
Angela Pohl/Instagram
For the next 5 months Pohl went through chemotherapy, and then had a double mastectomy in June. While that got rid of got 95% of the cancer, doctors told her she needed radiation over the summer and an additional 14 rounds of chemo.
Pohl has been sharing her journey onInstagram, where she has more than 3,300 followers and connects with other runners from all over the world. “One of my favorite things is going to big races and meeting up with people who are training for the same race,” she says. “I wanted to still take part in that. So I’ve been chronicling my training as well as my breast cancer journey, because it’s all wrapped up together.”
Through it all, she remains committed to running — and surviving.
Pohl now encourages everyone to do self-checks and get their mammograms on time. She says some of her followers have even been inspired to stop putting off their own screenings after learning about her story.
Since time can have such an impact on survival, it’s crucial that women don’t delay when it comes to their preventive health, she says.
“Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate. If you have some risk factors, obviously you want to get checked more often, but even if you don’t — even if you feel super healthy and everything else is checking out fine, you’re the fittest you’ve ever been — it can still happen.”
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source: people.com
