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by Laurie Stein
MIAMI (CBS4 News) ― October is breast cancer awareness month, and there is a good chance someone you know has been affected by this disease. CBS4's Laurie Stein is a breast cancer survivor and is sharing her story.

If you saw me today, you'd probably have no idea what I've been through. My husband Michael and I have a three-year-old daughter and we try to live our lives without fear and worry.

But I can never forget that like too many other women, I am a cancer survivor.

And this is my story.

Before I got married, I got a test for the cancer gene, because breast and ovarian cancer run in my family. Unfortunately, the results were bad. I had the gene, which meant I had a high probability of getting cancer. However, I was determined not to let a cancer gene ruin my life or my plans. My husband Michael and I fell in love, got married, and tried to put the test results in the back of our minds.

Despite the grim statistics, we thought cancer was something older people got. We decided to have children as soon as possible, and within a year, I was pregnant. I was excited about breastfeeding.

I had heard that some women who had the cancer gene were removing their healthy breasts to prevent cancer, and I was willing to do that, but my doctor told me that was way too radical for a young woman. That medical advice would come back to haunt me forever.

On November 12th, 2002 I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. We named her Paulina Faith, in memory of my mother, Pauline, who died when I was 23. This was simply the happiest day of our lives, captured by Channel 4, as we welcomed her into the world.

Just 8 months later, when I was taking a shower, I felt a small lump. Since I was still breastfeeding, doctors thought it was simply a blocked milk duct, but they scheduled a biopsy just to be safe. In our home video, you can see us taking off for a quick family vacation, thinking everything was fine, but when we got back to Miami, everything changed.

The biopsy showed I had a cancerous tumor in my left breast.

A week later, I was still in shock and I couldn't stop thinking about what this meant for my daughter. Since my own mom wasn't alive to see me get married, to watch me on TV, or to meet her granddaughter, all I want is to stay alive for my daughter.

Michael and I vowed to fight cancer as aggressively as possible. We searched the internet, and called all over the country to find the best doctors. We decided to go the world-renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City.

We watched as doctors at Sloan-Kettering Hospital injected my tumor with a radioactive dye, so they can see if the cancer had spread into my lymph nodes. Meanwhile, I had to prepare myself for the fact that I will have both breasts removed.

Waking up the morning of surgery, I was mentally and physically exhausted and wished this were all a bad dream.

My doctors and I had decided on a double mastectomy. I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure the cancer never comes back. Plus, I've seen before and after photos of breast reconstruction, and I was convinced I'll look okay when we're done.

After 6 hours of surgery, I woke up in pain and I was itching terribly, I had an allergic reaction to the morphine, and I couldn't stop scratching my face. My chest felt like a set of encyclopedias was on top of it. Doctors put tissue expanders in my chest, to stretch the muscle before reconstruction, and they hurt.

The recovery was painful, and embarrassing. After the surgery, I had tubes implanted to drain the wounds. For weeks, I had to hide them inside my clothes. I was self-conscious and I worried that people would know what I was going through. I tried to focus on the photos I've seen of women who look great after breast reconstruction, and I even ventured out into the city, to forget about cancer. Things were going well, until my cell phone rang.

Doctors finally had the lab results from surgery, and the news was bad. The cancer had spread to my lymph node, and the tumor was bigger than they'd hoped.

Because the cancer had spread, I needed aggressive chemotherapy. Within weeks, I lost all my eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair, except for the few strands I refused to part with. My doctors prescribed the most intense chemo possible, called "dose-dense" chemo, every two weeks for four months.

The sessions take all day, While Michael waits nearby. Every night he injected medication into my thigh, to keep up my white blood cell count. Each shot costs 400 dollars...but without them, I couldn't handle the chemo.

The chemo's basically poison to kill cancer cells, and it wiped me out, so I couldn't care for Paulina anymore. Then I got something called 'chemo brain'; I couldn't remember names, dates, or just about anything. Combine that with the way I looked and I worried I would never be the same.

But just when I was feeling sorry for myself, my family rallied around me. My mother-in-law moved-in to take care of our baby and my 13-year-old nephew shaved his head in sympathy. My friends pretended baldness was a new fashion statement, but I was too self-conscious to go out without a wig.

Finally the chemo's over, but next came two months of radiation treatments. Although my tumor is gone, and we were hoping chemo stopped any spread, we wanted to be extra sure. Every morning, I lie perfectly still while toxic radiation beamed into my chest and underarms.

Patients often don't like to talk about the side effects of cancer treatments, but they can be brutal and long-lasting--tissue damage, early menopause—and ironically, sometimes the treatments can even cause new cancers.

When it seemed like things couldn't get worse, I got horrible news. This time it wasn't about my health, but my dad's.

My father--who had been one of my biggest supporters during my fight--now had a battle of his own. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

He was a vibrant, strong man, who quickly deteriorated.

So while I was getting radiation treatments in Miami, he was in a hospital back near his home in Los Angeles.

Doctors blasted me with double treatments, two per day, so I could finish my radiation and rush home to see him.

Just two weeks after I finished my treatment, he lost his battle. And I was so sick, so tired, I barely got to say goodbye.

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