Metro Atlanta woman receives rare breast cancer diagnosis at 31

ATLANTA - Around 240,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Less than five percent of those cases are found in women under 40.

A metro Atlanta woman who fell into that rare group is sharing her story and urging other young women to start getting checked sooner.

"I broke down crying. It was kind of like an uncontrollable shake of like, ‘I can’t believe this is really happening, ’" Nicole Anderson told FOX 5.

At just 32 years-old, Anderson is a proud survivor of breast cancer.

"I got diagnosed in December of 2021…and it came out of nowhere. I have no family history. I don’t even have the gene," she explained.

While most doctors recommend their female patients start getting regular mammograms around the age of 40, she said the life changing diagnosis she received at just 31 came as a shock to even her doctor.

"By the time we actually knew what it was, I was already stage two, and they had classified it as triple positive," she recalled.

Anderson told FOX 5 the cancer spread to both breasts and her lymph nodes, so doctors at a facility in Newnan started her on an aggressive treatment plan.

"I had to do six rounds of chemotherapy, 25 rounds of radiation, a mastectomy on one side, and then reconstruction as well as 11 rounds of immunotherapy," she said.

The side effects that came with it were difficult to get through, but Anderson said working on her business, HER Wine company, kept her going.

"In the midst of that, I created a sparkling rose dedicated to this breast cancer journey, and it’s called A Toast to Me," she said.

Now that she’s in remission, Anderson said her new mission is encouraging other young women, especially Black women, to start getting regular mammograms earlier than the recommended age.

"We’re not immune to getting any types of diseases, and we have to take the precautionary steps of self-care. Self-care is more than just going to the spa it also means getting our mammograms and getting checked."

Anderson said she’s donating all the proceeds from that sparkling rose to a local nonprofit that helps financially support other women diagnosed with breast cancer.