Woman, 23, Learns She Has Breast Cancer While 39 Weeks Pregnant, Starts Chemo Just Weeks After Giving Birth (Exclusive)

Abby Wilson was diagnosed with triple-positive breast cancer on a Wednesday and had her baby the following Tuesday

NEED TO KNOW

• Abby Wilson discovered a lump in her breast during her third trimester, leading to a breast cancer diagnosis
• She began chemotherapy just weeks after giving birth and documented her journey to inspire others online
• Wilson credits her faith, community, and newborn daughter for helping her stay positive throughout her treatment

Abby Wilson was in her third trimester, counting down the days until welcoming her daughter, when she noticed a lump on her breast while in the shower.

Wilson, then 23, initially thought it could’ve been just another change to her body caused by pregnancy. 

“I was like, ‘Oh, it’ll probably just go away,’” she remembers. “Two weeks and it didn’t go away.”

Given she was weeks away from giving birth, Wilson notes that she was seeing her OB-GYN “pretty regularly” at the time, and mentioned the lump the next time she went in.

“She gave me a breast exam. She was like, ‘I’m not really worried about this. This happens all the time in pregnancy, but let’s send you to get an ultrasound just to be safe.’” Wilson recalls.

Like her OB-GYN, her radiologist told her that it likely wasn’t anything to worry about and they would rescan after her baby was born.

“It just so happened that my OBGYN had a breast surgeon that also works out of her office. When she called me back to tell me what the radiologist said, she was like, ‘Hey, do you care if I let this breast surgeon look at it?’ “ Wilson says. “And I was like, ‘Sure, that’s totally fine.’ Then a few days later, she called me back and said, ‘Hey, he thinks you need to get this biopsied.’ “

Wilson was 39 weeks pregnant when she went in for her biopsy, and admittedly didn’t think it was necessary.

“Everyone was like, ‘We don’t think this is anything,’” she explains. “I go in and get a biopsy done on a Tuesday. They called me back on Wednesday and told me that it was triple-positive breast cancer and I needed to come in on Friday to go over the pathology results. Then I had the baby the following Tuesday.” 

A week after giving birth to her daughter, she met with her oncologist for the first time. Four weeks after that, she started chemotherapy. 

@theabby_wilson

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Despite the joys that came with motherhood, Wilson admits she “was really, really down” at first.

“I was really sad or really depressed the first four weeks after I got the diagnosis or whatever,” she says. “After I had the baby, I felt like I was on a high in the newborn bubble, and then I had to go to a doctor’s appointment, and I just hit rock bottom.” 

Wilson took treatment “one day at a time” while also navigating life as a new mom.

“When I first got diagnosed, you want to think about the whole journey. Then you get really, really overwhelmed, and you’re like, ‘How am I ever going to do this?’” she shares. “It got to a point where I just had to be like, ‘What task needs to be done today? That’s all I’m going to worry about.’ If I have to go to this doctor’s appointment, we’re going to go to the doctor’s appointment, we’re going to get out of the way, and we’re not going to worry about what I have to do tomorrow.”

“Honestly, I think that’s how I balance it all. I look back and I’m still like, ‘I don’t even know how I did all of that,’” she adds.

Wilson tried to maintain a positive attitude as much as she could. 

“On my very first day of chemotherapy, I was sitting in the chemo chair, and I was just looking around, and it was just a very dark and heavy space. Nobody’s really smiling. Nobody’s really laughing. I just decided right then that I’m not going to let this get me down, and I’m just going to try to be the brightest light I can be,” she says. “I was like, maybe the nurses and the doctors and the other people getting chemo, maybe they need to see the Lord in me. And so I just decided I was going to smile. I was going to laugh. I started documenting my journey.” 

Wilson finished chemotherapy in March 2026, and that May, she had a double mastectomy with reconstruction.

Wilson shares that she is now in the maintenance phase of her treatment. 

“My cancer was HER2-positive mainly, and then it was very low receptor hormone positive. So I get this shot in my leg every three weeks called Phesgo, and that’s for the HER2 aspect,” she shares. “And I have to do that for a total of 17 rounds and it equals out to a little over a year. I will be doing that until January.”

“I currently have tissue expanders in, so I have one more surgery in November to put in the permanent implant,” she continues. “After that, I’m wrapping it up with my wade with cancer. I had a complete response to treatment and to surgery.”

Wilson was able to get through her treatment by “having a really, really good community.”

“My family is great. I have a bunch of friends. They rallied around me. I had to let go really fast of the fact that I’m going to have to let people help me,” she tells PEOPLE. “I had planned to breastfeed my baby for as long as possible, and that turned into four weeks, very fast. I was able to breastfeed for four weeks, but then I had to find either donor milk or a formula that worked.”

She also relied on her faith to get her through particularly trying times.

“I’m a believer in the Lord, and that’s what got me through too,” she says.

During her treatment, Wilson started posting more on her social media channels, documenting her chemotherapy journey on TikTok. 

“I found a community in that. I found another girl who literally had her baby the day after me, and she had the same diagnosis,” she shares. “I found a community there and just spreading joy and being a light on social media also got a little bit of a following.” 

“The majority of the people that were reaching out to me would reach out and say, ‘Hey, I just want you to know you have been a big encouragement to me. I’m going through chemotherapy, or I’m going through XYZ, or my mom’s going through this. And just seeing you on here laughing, smiling, posting your videos and just sharing your journey has been very, very helpful to me,’” Wilson continues.

Now that she is done with chemotherapy, Wilson is “just enjoying being a mom.”

“I’m enjoying starting to feel more like myself. Still just documenting my journey and showing other people that there is life after cancer. And honestly, I’m just 10 times more grateful for every single day that I get to wake up and be a mom, be a wife, have impact, get to go to work,” she says. “I remember the days on my way to chemo, and I was like, ‘Man, I’d love to go to work right now instead of chemotherapy.’ That’s what life looks like for me now.” 

Wilson also says that being able to stay home with her daughter was “a blessing in disguise.”

“Now I’ve been able to stay at home with my baby for over the first year of her life, and that has just felt like a f—ing huge blessing to me. Yeah, I had cancer and all that, which is horrible, but just getting to stay at home with her has been a huge blessing,” she shares. “That has probably been the biggest silver lining of this whole cancer thing, is just being able to stay at home with her.”

She notes that the diagnosis “would’ve been 10 times worse” if she didn’t have a baby as “a big distraction.”

“On the days when that felt really heavy and nothing was going right, all I had to do was pick her up, hold her, and her smiling back at me, that really got me through, I think, some of the hardest days,” Wilson shares. 

Her advice to anyone going through treatment is to “take it one day at a time.”

“It’s very easy to get overwhelmed in a journey like this if you think about the whole process, but do whatever you have to do to get through today,” she shares. “One thing that I told myself is that it could be a lot worse. There’s somebody out there who has it worse than you.”

“I’ve seen that just by sitting in chemo. If I look at somebody who’s getting the red devil, or somebody who they didn’t have any treatment options for and they had done all they could do for them, I would just think about that and be like, ‘I’m blessed that this is very treatable. I have a good team of doctors.’ That’s how I stayed positive.” 

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