If you have children, actress Miranda McKeon will most likely look familiar to you. The teen actress is best known for her role on Netflix's Anne With An E. Now, her life has taken a very sharp turn as she recently discovered she has stage three breast cancer.
Now, the charismatic 19-year-old is opening up about what this "one in a million" diagnosis means to her.
Sadly, most everyone knows someone who has been affected by this horrible disease, and 19-year-old actress Miranda McKeon is no different.
When she found a lump in her breast while on vacation with friends, she assured herself it was nothing.
"This is the moment where everything changes and there’s no going back. But after going down a little Google rabbit hole, my mind was at ease because I didn’t think anything could be wrong because of my age."
"I think they were more concerned than they let on because I really didn't think anything of it, to the point where I flew to San Francisco, where I was going to do a three-week work stay program on regenerative agriculture," she recalled.
The 19-year-old flew back home to New Jersey in a state of disbelief as she scheduled a host of ultrasounds, mammograms, as well as consultations with surgeons and oncologists.
Miranda's breast cancer is considered stage three because it's reached her lymph nodes.
"My doctor was like, 'Your stage doesn't define you. And your cancer is your cancer.' Which I appreciate because when you hear someone's stage, your mind goes straight to one place or another and I don't think that's necessarily representative of what I'm going through," she told the publication.
Miranda's four-month treatment plan includes chemotherapy, with infusions every other week, followed by radiation and possibly surgery.
"I feel like as humans, we look at other people in other situations and think, wow, how are they doing that? Or wow, I could never do that. And I probably would have thought the same thing about myself, but here I am and I'm now living in this story and I think we can all handle a lot more than we think we can," she explained.
What an important, powerful message. We're rooting for you, Miranda!
h/t: People
