Serena Coachman is now a firm believer in annual checkups. But during one such checkup in October 2019, Coachman’s OB-GYN felt a lump in her breast while examining her. 

The doctor encouraged her to have a mammogram done, but Coachman wasn’t worried. 

“I was like, ‘I’m not going to get a mammogram,’” she remembered thinking. “I wasn’t even thinking about cancer.” 

Eventually, the mammogram was done, and two days later she was asked to come back to have more extensive films taken. 

“This raised a flag for me,” said Coachman, an Elevate coach at Marlboro County High School. 

Once they were completed, it was confirmed that she had a lump in her breast, and it might be cancerous. 

Coachman processed this information and later had surgery by Dr. Chin in Bennettsville to remove the lump and four lymph nodes in November 2019. 

“It was stage one,” she said. 

By December 2019, Coachman met with a cancer doctor at Scotland Healthcare System to go over her treatment plan for metastatic breast cancer. 

“It is the type of breast cancer that starts in the milk ducts,” she said. “It feeds off of progesterone and estrogen.” 

To help her defeat metastatic breast cancer, she would have six weeks of radiation, five days a week. 

Her radiation was 30 minutes each day after she worked a full day at the high school. She set everything up this way because she wanted to work, but knew she would be tired and sleepy after radiation. 

Coachman would leave at 3 p.m. and drive herself to treatment in Laurinburg. 

“I had to do an extensive type of radiation,” she said. 

Her cancer was on the left side, where her heart was located. Coachman had to do a specific type of breathing technique where the chest cavity would lift off the heart so she could receive radiation and not have it affect the organ. 

Since the cancer was caught early, she did not have chemotherapy. 

She completed her radiation on Feb. 17, 2020. 

Coachman celebrated one year as a breast cancer survivor in February. She vowed she would pay it forward by helping someone else going through treatment. 

“I want to become an advocate (for breast cancer prevention),” Coachman said. 

She said she had a wonderful support system at MCHS and Scotland Health Care System. 

She noted that Tawanka Smith, administrative assistant at MCHS, helped her a lot. Smith is a five-year cancer survivor who helped her a lot. 

“The experience for me was mental, not physical,” she said. “I wanted to give up many times. Radiation drains everything out of you.” 

During the last two weeks of her treatment, her skin started peeling badly, and the pain was excruciating. 

She admitted that she couldn’t have imagined how she would have fared if her cancer had been further along. 

Coachman, who is 43, will have to take Tamoxifen for the next 10 years or until she starts menopause. 

She encouraged people to get their mammograms done. 

“It is a must,” she said. “I am so glad that I did. And do the self-exams, check your breasts.” 

And Coachman added the advice wasn’t just for women, but men as well. 

“Men get breast cancer, too,” she said.