Gitte’s Story:

In December 2016 my sister, Lisa was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She was 44 and we had never had any breast cancer in the family so this was a big shock. I’m originally from Denmark and I ended up flying back there a lot after Lisa’s diagnosis as she went through chemo and radiation, and as I kept going home things got worse. The cancer eventually spread to her other breast, her liver, bones, and brain and mutated into triple negative. I stayed with her for the last months, and she died in August 2019 leaving two wonderful children and us all heartbroken and traumatized. Then I was diagnosed with Lobular Breast Cancer in March 2020 at the age of 42, and it seemed unreal. I was a classic double whammy case with dense breasts and a 10.5cm mass on the right that was only spotted on the MRI (after two years with mammography and ultrasound every six months). I had chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation followed by several other surgeries and severe sepsis. In December 2021 my mum was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer and completed one year of treatment. In May 2023 we found out that the cancer had returned and metastasized to her liver, bones, and lungs. She died of metastatic breast cancer in March 2024.

As someone taking both aromatase inhibitors and CDK4/6 inhibitors, I struggle daily with side effects that impact my quality of life and are also enormously shitty and embarrassing to deal with. It just plain sucks and I'm thrilled to be an Ambassador for “Make Cancer Less Shitty.”. 

Gitte’s Bio:

Gitte Henssel Joergensen is a Cancer Research Advocate and Patient Advocate Grant Reviewer, collaborating with several prestigious organizations and institutions. Since 2021, she has been involved in reviewing and evaluating research proposals, promoting patient-driven research, and raising awareness and support for lobular breast cancer. She has taken part in highly respected advocate training programs such as Project LEAD, the AACR Scientist-Survivor Program, and the ALAMO Advocate Scholar Program. She is motivated by her personal experience as a cancer survivor and her desire to make a positive impact on the lives of others affected by this disease.

Outside of “Cancerland”, she works as a Research Associate at the University of Connecticut, where she has been working for several years on eye-tracking research and integrating this method with other measures such as fMRI, tDCS, and EEG collaborating across a variety of disciplines such as cognitive and social psychology, education, communication, etc. She contributes to original research and consults on topics such as language/reading comprehension, event representation, social communication, and emotion perception, using advanced scientific methods. She is passionate about exploring how eye movements can reflect human cognitive processes in various contexts and domains.

Gitte’s Social Media Channels:

X: @GitteJoergensen

TikTok: @catsagainstbreastcancer

Instagram: @gitteilc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gitte-henssel-joergensen/