Episode Details

Melissa Mariano is a 43-year-old Canadian flight attendant living in Dubai who was diagnosed with triple positive (ER+, PR+, HER2+) breast cancer after a routine mammogram...zero symptoms, zero lumps. She almost skipped her follow-up appointment. In this episode, she shares how she went from stage 0 DCIS to navigating Herceptin without chemo, low-dose "Baby Tam," the Dutch test, and a radical people-pleasing wake-up call that changed everything.

In this episode we cover:

• How calcifications on a mammogram went from "nothing to worry about" to a biopsy — and why she delayed 4 months

• The vacuum-assisted biopsy that may have removed her invasive cancer entirely before surgery even happened

• Why her final pathology came back DCIS only, stage 0 — and what triple positive actually means

• 18 rounds of Herceptin (anti-HER2) with NO chemo — and the NCCN guideline that made that possible

• The Italian Clancy study on "Baby Tam" (5mg Tamoxifen) and why she's tapering down from 20mg

• Dutch test results: high estrogen, good methylation — what it means and what she's doing about it

• Supplements she's using: L-theanine, Relora, liposomal glutathione, DIM (cycled), NAC

• Sauna 2x/week, red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, yin yoga, sound healing, Reiki, breathwork — her full protocol

• Egg freezing for fertility preservation before starting Tamoxifen

• The people-pleasing pattern she believes contributed to her diagnosis — and the shift that changed everything

• Why she says: "I'm no longer a phony — but I am my priority"

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