What happened, in summary

Jennifer Feinberg was 41 when a mammogram led to an initial diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in 2018. She underwent a double mastectomy with reconstruction, and surgical pathology then identified HER2-positive cancer.

In 2020, persistent cough and shortness of breath signaled metastatic recurrence. Feinberg received trastuzumab, docetaxel, and pertuzumab, and her cancer remained stable for 18 months. In 2021, the disease spread to her brain. She joined the HER2CLIMB-04 clinical trial and received tucatinib with trastuzumab deruxtecan for about nine months. Later treatment included stereotactic radiosurgery, T-DM1 with neratinib, and trastuzumab with pertuzumab.

By September 2026, Feinberg was 49 and back on trastuzumab as her tenth line of treatment. More than eight years after her original diagnosis, she was living with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer while raising teenagers, participating in a support group, and fundraising for breast-cancer research. Her children had been six and nine when she was first diagnosed, and by the latest update both were teenagers.