After taking some deep breaths, Danielle immediately thought about how she was going to break the news to her husband Jensen Karp.
“I waited that night until the kids had gone to bed and then I told him because he actually brought it up,” she remembered. “He said, ‘Still no results, huh?’ And I said, ‘Actually, I do have the results, and I have cancer.’ It was a big gut punch. Both of his parents passed from cancer, and it was hard.”
Another tough moment came when she had to tell her parents about her diagnosis.
“I hadn’t told them that I had even had an abnormal mammogram because I figured it was a non-story until it was a story,” Danielle noted. “So once I knew I had cancer, I told both of them. And managing or feeling like I was going to have to manage the emotions of others was the hardest part.”
“Hearing my parents cry, it was hard,” she added. “It’s a hard experience. And truthfully, it just makes me feel really good about being able to encourage other people to stay on top of it because not everybody is so lucky to find out they have cancer at such an early stage.”