Birding and Breast Cancer – My Story

Photo: One of my first pictures as a birder. A Brown Thrasher at the U.S. Botanic Garden, taken with a Nikon D90.

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In April 2023, at the age of 37, I got the heartbreaking and life changing diagnosis of Stage III, Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I’d just gotten married the previous September, and was enjoying my first year of marriage living in D.C. We were traveling, making plans, and even talking about having children.

I had no known history of breast cancer—just one aunt that had survived a diagnosis 17 years prior. Because she was not a “first-degree” relative, I had no idea I was personally at risk. I did genetic testing at my diagnosis and found out that I had a mutation in the BRCA1 gene. The gene was hiding out on my father’s side, so it didn’t look like I had an extensive history of breast cancer. (More info: BRCA1 mutation)

I decided to face the disease head on with the support of my husband. I did 5.5 months of chemo (16 rounds), had a mastectomy, and will soon start radiation. I will have a second mastectomy and ovary removal as a preventative measure at a later date, because my gene mutation puts me at a high risk of developing more cancer in the future. I also receive immunotherapy every 3 weeks through April 2024.

During the worst parts of my treatment, I tried to stay as active and as busy as possible. I did watercolor, exercised, took walks, cooked, etc. I also had a TON of appointments and was at the hospital 2-5 times a week.

In August I started doing long walks on the National Mall. I would go to various museums or the U.S. Botanic Garden. One day I was at the Botanic Garden and I saw some cool birds I didn’t recognize. I was disappointed that I didn’t even know what these birds were and wanted to learn more. I had tried birding previously during COVID when I lived in Seattle, but could never quite get it off the ground. I had a really hard time identifying birds, so I just gave it up.

At the Botanic Garden I started playing around with the Merlin application to see what birds would come up by sound, and running photos of birds in the photo identification section. Then I remembered my husband had an old Nikon D90 camera, so I started taking that with me to capture photos of the birds–this turned out to be something I LOVED doing. I already had a nice pair of binoculars, so I started bringing that too. I made an eBird account and the rest is kind of history.

When all of this was happening, I was nearing the end of my chemo treatment. I had this deep, deep urge to get my life back, and going on long walks each day in search of birds for my life list proved to myself that I could still do things physically, even if I wasn’t as strong as before.

One day my husband and I decided to check out Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. I was learning how eBird hot spots worked and I wanted to see what was there. That turned into something serendipitous and incredible, as right when we showed up, a weekly bird walk was happening! Now it’s my favorite part of the week and I’m so grateful for the people I’ve met on those walks.

After a solid month of birding with the Nikon D90 we started looking at upgrading our camera set up. We ended up with a Sony a6700 APS-C camera with a 70-350mm telephoto zoom lens. It’s the perfect, portable setup, and we’ve since expanded our lens collection to make our camera all-purpose for a lot of hobbies. My husband loves birding too and he’s also gotten into astrophotography. We fell into these hobbies and they’ve turned out to be absolutely perfect for us.

Which brings me back to finding birding during my battle with cancer. When I’m outside, looking for birds, I’m not thinking about my cancer. I’m soaking up nature, exercising, and expressing myself creatively—all things that I believe are important in this fight.

That’s the story of how I got started and how things are going. If you’re into birding—how did you start?