When Lannon Village Trustee Amy Martin found out her lifelong friend, former soccer teammate and current Sussex Village Trustee Stacy (Landgraf) Riedel had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, she said, “I never thought I’d actually shave my head.”
But she did.
“I get bored with my hair and need a change sometimes, but this is definitely the most extreme thing I’ve ever done. I wanted to do it for Stacy, though, and show her that I’m here for her, and she doesn’t have to fight this alone,” she said.
Riedel has inflammatory breast cancer.
She and Martin played soccer together starting in fifth grade and attended Sussex’s Hamilton High School together, where they played four years of varsity soccer and won a conference championship together their freshman year.
Martin said shaving her head isn’t enough to show her support for her friend. She has also started a GoFundMe account, organized a soccer benefit game and is working to create awareness about inflammatory breast cancer.
The Kick for a Cure! soccer game is scheduled for Sunday, May 22. The event begins at 2 p.m. with the game at 3 at the Pewaukee Sports Complex, N45 W23440 Lindsay Road, Pewaukee. There will be concessions, a raffle and opportunities to donate. To volunteer or find out how to help, visit bit.ly/StacySoccer.
“My heart broke for Stacy as a woman and a mother. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be diagnosed and then all the worry and fears that come with caring for your children, now and in the future,” said Martin. “They are so young, and Stacy has so much more mothering to do.”
Riedel, 42, graduated from Hamilton High School in 1997— with Martin — and was elected to the Sussex Village Board in 2021. She and her husband, Jake, have three sons: Maddox, 10, Mason, 4, and MJ, 2.
She is a business owner and works outside of the home where she is involved in real estate purchasing. She also owns a company that develops and manages websites for private practice doctors.
She was diagnosed in March with stage 3 inflammatory breast cancer.
“(The cancer) has not traveled away from the initial site, but it is in the skin,” she said. “Stage 3 can be treatable, manageable and curable with a very specific trimodal treatment method.”
She plans to manage and balance her treatment while maintaining her businesses and her commitment to the Village Board.
Riedel said she will have three forms of treatment: chemotherapy, with the goal of shrinking the tumor, followed by a modified radical mastectomy to remove the cancer and armpit lymph nodes, and radiation and other treatments such as more chemotherapy or radiation after the surgery. She added she will have 18 rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and six weeks of radiation. She said her treatment plan should take about nine months.
“Afterward, I will receive scans and possibly targeted hormone therapy medication to continue on to a healthy path for life,” she added.
She said she has already started the treatments, which are going well. “I feel good, with minimal side effects,” she said.
“I am maintaining an active normal lifestyle along with a positive attitude, and my spirits are up. Half the battle is staying healthy in the head. I am very thankful for a wonderful support system to get me through this with amazing family, friends, neighbors and community members,” Riedel said.
According to the National Cancer Institute, inflammatory breast cancer, also known as IBC, accounts for just 1% to 5% of all breast cancers diagnosed in the United States.
IBC is the hardest breast cancer to treat, and it is more aggressive because it spreads more quickly than other types of breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
According to the society, inflammatory breast cancer is only diagnosed in the later stages; in one of every three cases, it has already metastasized — spread to distant parts of the body — by the time it is diagnosed.
Inflammatory breast cancer occurs more often in women younger than 40, in Black women more than white women and in women who are overweight or obese, according to the society.
Survival rates after five years are 54% for stage 3, in which the cancer has spread to nearby structures of lymph nodes, but drops to 18% for stage 4, in which it has metastasized, according to the American Cancer Society.
Riedel said she is receiving treatment at Froedtert Hospital Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, which treats only about five patients a year who have inflammatory breast cancer because it is so rare.
She sees Dr. Yee Chung Cheng at Froedtert, who formed an inflammatory breast cancer team that joined the international IBC Connect organization led by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Riedel said it’s important to be treated by an IBC specialist.
“I am very fortunate to have the best possible care team treating me,” she said.
“With the close collaboration with other renowned cancer centers in the world, they aim to provide the state-of-the-art management to inflammatory breast cancer in the state of Wisconsin,” Riedel said.
“In addition to myself being a patient at Froedtert and under the care of Dr. Cheng, I am also on the Houston M.D. Anderson Cancer Center tumor board, where the team reviews my case and treatment, providing guidance to the Froedtert team,” she added.
“This also helps me get the best treatment possible,” she said.
Riedel said she and Martin want to create awareness of IBC.
“Amy and I would like to bring awareness that breast cancer does not always present itself with a lump,” Riedel said. “It is important to be aware that Inflammatory breast cancer doesn’t commonly form a lump, which is a common occurrence with other forms of breast cancer. Instead, the tumor is linear that forms in the breast skin.”
She said she woke one morning in February with “a sudden onset of symptoms that included a swollen breast that was tender, warm to the touch, red, dimpled skin, and had a heavy feeling to it.”
She said she was a nursing mother and she noticed her milk ducts were clogged, and she had a sharp pain when nursing.
“I thought all of these signs and symptoms pointed towards mastitis. I went on antibiotics for a week and was told if the symptoms did not get better then we will do additional testing that included a mammogram and ultrasound,” she said.
The mammogram did not pick up the cancer; the ultrasound did.
“I was very shocked to learn that what I thought was an infection with no lumps in my breast turned out to be inflammatory breast cancer,” she said.
Inflammatory breast cancer can develop rapidly, within weeks or months, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Symptoms include:
“More research needs to be done and more information needs to be available about IBC. They’ve come so far but still have so much further to go,” said Martin.
“It’s shocking, but Stacy has always been a bubbly, positive person, and if she can keep that attitude up and we all can help to alleviate some of the outside stress, she will be OK,” said Martin. “She is tough, and she will beat this.”
Cathy Kozlowicz can be reached at 262-361-9132 or cathy.kozlowicz@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @kozlowicz_cathy.