Riverside Healthcare | The Journey | Winter 2022-23

4 RiversideHealthcare.org Lexie Painter was enjoying a few carefree winter days in 2020 with friends in St. Louis. When she hopped into the shower one morning, she happened to run her hand across her right breast and felt a lump. But breast cancer was the last thing on her mind. After all, Painter, of Kankakee, was just 25 years old. “You don’t often hear of people my age getting breast cancer,” she says. When the lump was still there a week later, Painter saw her doctor to have it checked out. After she had an ultrasound and her doctor recommended a biopsy, Painter knew something was wrong. Soon thereafter, Painter learned that she had early-stage invasive lobular carcinoma, a disease that usually strikes women twice her age. “I was a little in shock,” Painter recalls. “I didn’t know how to feel.” Breast cancer doesn’t run in her family, she says. And she tested negative for inherited gene mutations that put young women at high risk for breast cancer. Armed with a positive attitude, Painter was determined to face cancer head-on. After she had a mastectomy, she needed chemotherapy and radiation therapy to reduce the risk of her cancer coming back. She met with Annabelle Veerapaneni, MD, GRATEFUL for great care A young woman’s breast cancer journey Helping Lexie Painter through her cancer treatment were her husband, Jayme, and oncologist, Annabelle Veerapaneni, MD.

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