Breast cancer is something about which every woman worries. It's a disease that will strike one out of every eight women.

Video

See Pam's Story

Chances are, you know someone who has it. We do too.

This summer our friend and co-worker, 7NEWS Meteorologist Pam Daale, found a lump. She was tested and her doctors confirmed it was cancer.

Pam shares her story and takes us on her personal journey, battling breast cancer.

Pam's story actually begins with her mother.

Pam's Story

Sixteen years ago, it was my mother who was dealing with her own breast cancer.

"It was a very small growth, like a little tiny button on a men's shirt, like a pea," Mom says.

Small, but potentially deadly if left untreated. Mom had surgery and radiation and she survived. And when mom went for a recent mammogram she told my older sister,"You're 40, you're going with me, you're going to have this mammogram, never thinking about Pam at all because she's five years younger."

And in June, when I went for my annual well-woman exam, everything was fine.

In fact, at my well-woman appointment, the doctor said go ahead and make yourself a mammogram appointment sometime in the next year. No big rush on it, so I'm thinking, I'll wait until November, my birthday. It'll remind me to do it.

But a month later, when I was doing my self-exam, I feel this lump and called immediately and said, "Okay, I need a mammogram."

The mammogram was suspicious. So was the ultrasound. So my doctors ordered a lumpectomy, a small surgery where they removed the suspicious lump.

They took it out and they said, 'Yeah, for sure, it's cancer."

"We had concerns then. Has this spread anywhere else? Is it more extensive in the left breast and as you know, all the tests have come back very favorably," says my doctor, Dr. Alan Feiner.

But because my cancer tumor was aggressive, I'm thinking I've got to be aggressive too.

And aggressive means chemotherapy -- once a month for the next eight months.

It starts with an IV, pushing the cancer-fighting chemicals into me, trying to stop any cancer cell from growing and multiplying.

"Chemotherapy doesn't, isn't smart enough, to know that it's attacking your cancer cells, it just attacks rapidly dividing cells," says clinical nurse specialist Linda Davendorf.

"You can feel lousy for a couple days and you recover quickly because those cells heal," says Dr. Feiner.

The cells heal, but there was something else, something that can affect every woman's self-image.

"Because it destroys those rapidly dividing cells, you'll lose your hair," the nurse says.

She was right. Two weeks to the day, it started. My hair just kept coming out. It looks awful this way, so I thought I might as well get rid of it all.

So I invited my friend Emily over to help. There were moments where it was all too real, but there were also moments when we could laugh at my Army buzz.

It didn't take long. Within a few minutes, my hair was almost all gone.

But these days there are fashion solutions to almost everything, so I have a new wig. And what has sustained me so far. Is my faith and my family.

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In the coming weeks, 7NEWS and TheDenverChannel.com will chronicle Pam's journey.

She will be writing weekly journals and we will be posting them on the Web.

We encourage you to write to her at pam_daale@thedenverchannel.com and to share your thoughts on breast cancer in our community forum.