[00:00:00] Adam Walker: From Susan G Komen, this is Real Pink, a podcast exploring real stories, struggles, and triumphs related to breast cancer. We’re taking the conversation from the doctor’s office to your living room.
[00:00:17] Caregiving can be a very personal role on many levels, assisting a loved one through their cancer diagnosis. Helping with daily activities, providing support and helping to make treatment decisions may all be a part of their responsibilities. When young adults are the caregiver taking care of a patient, they face many unique challenges such as having more duties to juggle and managing their own growing relationships and careers.
[00:00:42] Harley Stuebgen was just 25 years old when her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She immediately stepped in as her caregiver and supported her through her entire breast cancer journey. For her mother Kim, the support of her daughter and her greater community gave her the strength and support she needed to keep going.
[00:01:00] Their experience highlights the powerful bond between mother and daughter and how allowing people to help can make all the difference. We’re so excited to have them on the show today to tell their story. Kim and Harley, welcome to the show. Well, I’m, this is gonna be a really good conversation. I appreciate y’all taking the time to be here.
[00:01:21] Kim, let’s start with you and your breast cancer story. How did you find out that you had breast cancer and what was your treatment like?
[00:01:28] Kimberly Stuebgen: I went for my usual mammogram beginning of the year. I think it was around March. March the mammogram.
[00:01:38] They called me back. There was, you they found something they wanted to do, another closeup imaging that led to an ultrasound and some biopsy. And I found out right before Memorial Day in 2023. I was actually heading to our family camp for the weekend. We were gonna be celebrating the holiday with all of our friends that have camps up at the campground we go to.
[00:02:09] And the kids were coming up and I was on my way and I got the call from a nurse that I, that the tumor was cancerous and that I was gonna have to start the breast cancer journey.
[00:02:22] Adam Walker: Wow. That is not what you want to hear on the way to some relaxation that’s not great. And what was your treatment like as well?
[00:02:32] Kimberly Stuebgen: So originally when they first saw the tumor, they thought it was kind of small. They were thinking it was gonna be a lumpectomy. So we had scheduled that. I had a cruise to Alaska scheduled, so we had to wait for that.
[00:02:49] So it just delayed it by a week or two. But when I came back and had the MRI biopsy, they discovered that it was actually larger than that they had anticipated, and that there was a some there was some cells or something that had been broken up in my right side that they thought could probably lead to cancer as well.
[00:03:13] So, they changed the entire plan. They decided to do the double mastectomy. So I had that in July. And after that we also did the hysterectomy. My was hormone induced cancer. So we did the hysterectomy and and then I was on the medications to stop the hormones from
[00:03:40] entering my body in any sort of way. So it it was long and it was tough, but I was very lucky that my onco score came back low and I didn’t need the chemo or radiation. I just needed extra surgery and some medication. So, very blessed, very lucky, and it was caught early.
[00:04:03] Adam Walker: Yeah. Yeah, that’s great.
[00:04:04] I’m glad to hear that. And Harley, I’d love to hear from your perspective, what was it like hearing that your mom had breast cancer? Tell us about that experience.
[00:04:12] Harley Stuebgen: Yeah. I remember when she had her mammogram, she, they called her back and said that there was something dense in there, which was normal for her.
[00:04:20] She had gone back a couple times before. And what’s really funny is, so she almost didn’t reschedule. She was supposed to go and she canceled it and she was like, ah, I should probably go, but I like, I’m so busy. And I was like, no, mom. Like you need to make sure you go. It’s very important. So she went, she came back.
[00:04:39] She said I have to go back. There was dense stuff. No big deal. We’ve been down that road a few times before. She comes back from her second one and she’s like, Hmm. Something just doesn’t feel right. And my brothers, my dad are like, Kim, you’re being dramatic. There’s nothing wrong like you you’re just working yourself up over nothing.
[00:05:01] And I remember she comes into my bedroom, because I still lived at home at the time I was, it was the beginning of 2023, so I was 23. And she was like, Harley, something’s not right. Like I, I feel like I might have breast cancer. I’m like, okay, well let’s not jump the gun here. That’s a crazy thing to think, right?
[00:05:23] And she’s I know, but I think I just feel it, like something’s just not right. The doctors weren’t it, something was just off. The vibes were off, she just felt her gut was something not right, and she’s I need you to be ready. I’m like, okay. And I’m taking this as, I think my mom might be a little crazy, but I’m not gonna argue with her in this moment.
[00:05:44] This is a very serious moment. Your parent comes to you and says, Hey, I think I might have cancer. You need to be ready. What else do you say? But okay, I mean, how do you respond to that? And it was the day before Memorial Day weekend, and she was like, I’m going up to camp. The results aren’t gonna be in yet.
[00:06:02] I’m going up by myself. And we’re like, okay, whatever. I wasn’t a big fan of it, but I let her do it. And so she gets the call, she calls my father, and then she calls me. And she’s Hey, I have it. Like we’re this is it. We’re gonna go. We’re rolling. Doctor says, I have cancer. No big deal. We’re gonna get through it.
[00:06:20] She goes, but you have five minutes. Your dad’s a wreck. He’s on his way home. You need to be ready because your dad is destroyed. I’m like, okay, cool. Here we go. So you never really see your parents cry a lot. I have never seen my mother, my father, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles cry more in my entire life than I had in that nine month period where my mom got diagnosed, through her surgeries, and it was like the, it’s the hardest thing ever.
[00:06:48] I mean, to watch your family cry constantly and you have to be that one person that doesn’t, to kind of rally everybody else is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, honestly. So the whole, yeah, the whole experience was tough, but we came through it on the other side, I think better in every way, our entire family.
[00:07:10] So very grateful.
[00:07:13] Adam Walker: I’d imagine they’re pretty grateful for you as well, so well let’s talk about that caregiving role. Harley, I mean, you were mid twenties, stepped into a caregiving role. What was that experience like?
[00:07:27] Harley Stuebgen: It’s interesting because my mother was a very young mom. She had three kids by the time she was 25.
[00:07:36] So she my parents had their own house, had three babies doing it all. They had three under five. Like they, they had crazy experience. I was 23 and living at home. So I, when this whole thing happened, I’m like, how did she do this? At my age, I have no idea. So I remember all the steps, when she came home from surgery, we had the, how I was like a, I don’t wanna say the word dictator, but I was very stern with my siblings and my father, and I’m like, this is how things have to go. You all need to be ready, like house needs to be cleaned. Like you need to listen to me when I tell you what to do because I’m in charge now.
[00:08:20] So I, I had to kind of step into this like parental role for my siblings, but also for my dad, which is a very humbling experience, I think all in all. And for me to take care of my mother, the way she took care of me my entire life still does it’s very humbling for me because my mother, when she, even out of surgery, she couldn’t sit up, she couldn’t grab a cup of water.
[00:08:45] She couldn’t do, she couldn’t move her arms for the first few days. So, brushing her teeth, she couldn’t do, she couldn’t drink from a straw like I had to do everything for her. I had to help her get in the shower. I had to help her shower, I had to feed her, I had to help her change her clothes. I was doing her drains and some of those things my brothers and father probably could have helped with.
[00:09:05] Yes. But I wasn’t gonna ask them to do that because to do that for your mother as a son, I think is different. And I was very comfortable having that role. I had no issue stepping into it. I think it was kind of an assumed situation where my dad had to go to work. That was just how it was. And my brothers, they, we all have jobs.
[00:09:26] I worked from home. Luckily my company was very forgiving about it. And I had, it was no question that I wasn’t gonna leave my mother to the point where after two weeks my mom was like, Harley I think I’m okay. Like she, I think I, I had almost smothered her with all this love and I I wanted to take care of her so bad and I didn’t sleep.
[00:09:49] I was with her more than I ever had been, which is a very strong statement to make because I don’t know if you can tell, but her and I are very close. So this was, it was, it brought us together in a different way. But there was times where… even the home nurses would come visit and check on her.
[00:10:05] And I had written down notes, like pages and pages. I had my own notebook, and they would come in and they were like, we don’t really even have to do anything. Like I I wanted to give her what she’s given me my entire life, really.
[00:10:22] Adam Walker: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. So, so Kim you alluded to this earlier, I mean, you said Harley was your second call.
[00:10:32] You have five minutes to fall apart and then get ready. You’re in the driver’s seat here is what it sounds like. And I mean, talk more about that. You’re, as a mother you’ve got other kids, they have their strengths, she has her strength, your husband has his strengths.
[00:10:47] Talk more about sort of how you knew that was the right move.
[00:10:52] Kimberly Stuebgen: I mean, Harley is just this extremely strong very independent from a young age. Take charge kind of person. And since we had, kind of had the conversation, she and I, that this was probably what the diagnosis was gonna be.
[00:11:13] I mean, I just, I don’t, I just had that feeling. So yeah, we sort of talked about it a little bit, like what was gonna happen. And when I was… I had gone to camp a day early. It was the day after my biopsy, and the nurse told me I wasn’t gonna get my results for five to seven days. So I thought, okay, I can get in the car, I’m gonna drive up to camp, I’m gonna open it up get everything ready.
[00:11:38] And then the next day everyone was gonna be coming. So I get in the car and I wasn’t even out of my driveway yet, and she called and I probably shoulda turned around. Pulled back in the driveway. Maybe stayed at home, but I don’t know, something in me just kept going and I just kept driving the car and the nurse was talking to me on the phone and I’m, and after you hear the words, you have cancer sometimes, like you, you can’t like, relate to anything else.
[00:12:09] And I’m driving. I’m listening and not all I know. I didn’t hear everything that she said. I just know that she said we would need to start scheduling appointments. Right. So as soon as I got off the phone with her, of course my first call was to my husband, who is a, I mean, he’s so strong and we’ve been together since we were, since I was 17 years old.
[00:12:28] So it’s been a long relationship. We’ve been through so much together and it just broke him because. I’ve always sort of just been the I do everything like I work, right? Yeah. We took care of the kids. I did everything around the house and because he was working as well, and so I think that was just, it was shocking.
[00:12:53] Plus the relationship that we have is it goes back so long. So after I got off the phone with him and he was broken, my next call was to Harley to confirm. I I just knew that she would be able to get it together real fast because her dad was coming home and somebody was gonna need to talk him down because I wasn’t sure how this was gonna go down and I couldn’t turn around.
[00:13:20] I just kept going and I drove all the way up to camp. On the way up I called my mom, my mother-in-law, my sister, I called my sons. Wow. And I just kept saying look, this is I got my diagnosis. I’m gonna be fine. Don’t be upset. We’re gonna, it’s gonna be fine. I just kept saying that over and everyone was good.
[00:13:45] Like my mom, my mom started, everyone was crying, but I’m like, look, I’m gonna be fine. And I’m driving so I’m not crying. Like we’re good. I knew Harley was at home. She had also called my best friend. My best friend came over. So she was with Harley and Jason, and as the boys came home they were together.
[00:14:02] Just get it out because I said don’t come up to camp and cry. We’re not doing that. We’re gonna, we’re gonna make a don’t come up and start crying. So, the only call where I almost cried my mother-in-law, I called her and she immediately burst into tears and I said to her, I love you, and I’m hanging up the phone and we’ll talk later.
[00:14:24] So when my friends came up, including my best friend who was with Harley we sat down at the picnic table and I said we are having our wing cook off this weekend. We are having a weekend of all fun. I have breast cancer. If you have questions. I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m getting it out right now.
[00:14:47] We’re done talking about it as soon as I said that’s it. We’re not talking about it for the weekend. Yeah, so we were up there to have fun, but I just, I think Harley has just always been, I mean, like she and I have been tight, I think from the day she was born. I have two sons and I love them so, so much.
[00:15:11] The relationship with your daughter’s a little bit different. Yeah. But she also has always been like, sort of like I was growing up, I was the oldest of five siblings. I was the oldest of 27, 30 cousins. So anytime we were together as a family, I was always like taking care of my nieces and nephews and taking care of my cousins and I always taking care of somebody I’m the caretaker of the family.
[00:15:39] Harley took that role over when she was a teenager. She started stepping in and doing all of the same things that I did at her age. So I can, I could see in her that she had this very maternal instinct and she is, like I said, really strong. Control her emotions better than me.
[00:16:06] But there was no doubt in my mind that I was in good hands. I mean, she, yeah. Yeah. Sounds like it. Like she, from the minute I walked in, from the, or not, when the minute I came home from the hospital, like she was at my bedside she took care of the people were dropping off food, you know, she was taking care of that. People wanting to come in the house.
[00:16:30] Dozens of jars of flowers in my room. Like every day she would cut them and rewater them. So she became a florist, nice. Nice. We had guests come over, she would let them in a little at a time. There was charts with my medication times and my drains and I mean, there was no doubt in my mind that she was going take care of me and that I was in good hands.
[00:16:53] And my husband too. I mean, he did a phenomenal job. He also was very helpful, with, you the drains and I mean just helping me to get dressed sometimes and get in the shower. Yeah. But like I just I’m very lucky to have the family that I have, but also just to have that close relationship where I wasn’t embarrassed of what I looked like after the surgery because right.
[00:17:23] There’s, everything had changed. And for me to be able to ex basically expose myself to my daughter, like my real self, like everything there was no it was, there was never an uncomfortable moment. It was just, okay, this is what I’m gonna look like. So. Here it is. Like, how what do we do next?
[00:17:45] Adam Walker: I mean, it sounds like you had a pretty amazing support structure there led by Harley as you said. I also understand you had a friend tribe that provided some support as well. What kind of things did they do for you?
[00:17:58] Kimberly Stuebgen: Yeah, I mean, I have an amazing circle of friends. I, some of my friends I’ve been we’ve been together since I was three years old, so they’re just amazing.
[00:18:09] My, my friends my sister started a a food train. So all of my friends like joined this food train. There was food coming. My boss, she had organized something through work for me too, where there were gift cards for food or DoorDash or there was food being delivered. I mean, it was amazing.
[00:18:33] But I was just saying the other day to someone they asked me about this. One thing that a mother carries on her shoulders is I need to feed my family dinner. Right. I mean, it just, it’s just one of those things. Sure. We always feel responsible for dinner and when I came home from the hospital and I was laying there, all I could think of was, who is gonna feed my family today?
[00:18:57] Because my husband had to go get my medications and Harley was, know, sitting in there to help me. My sons were at work and I kept thinking like, well, who’s gonna cook them dinner? Because it’s usually me. And Right, yeah. As as I’m laying there, just like tormenting myself about dinner, the doorbell rang and my friend was dropping off dinner and that was almost an entire month that happened
[00:19:24] every day. People were bringing food. We had so much food. So much food that there were times I’m like I said, honey, take take these leftovers to work because our, we don’t have enough room in our refrigerator.
[00:19:40] Adam Walker: Yeah. So yeah, those casserole dishes, they’re pretty big. They take a lot of space in the fridge.
[00:19:44] Yeah.
[00:19:45] Kimberly Stuebgen: Yeah, absolutely. And there was just so much of it and which was amazing that they did that. It was incredible. And then when we did our fundraiser, this group of individuals that just came and supported our breast cancer fundraiser was just it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life.
[00:20:08] I mean, just the support and the outpouring of love and kindness. I guess comes back to you when, you know what you put out, I guess, comes back and..
[00:20:21] Adam Walker: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:20:22] Kimberly Stuebgen: I live my life like that. I’m kind to everyone. And I always wanna help. I always wanna be there for them. So for it to come back full circle, it’s just like the most humbling experience.
[00:20:34] Just standing there and looking out and seeing all these people. So yeah, I, I have an incredible group of people surrounding my family and they really helped us to get through all of the tough days.
[00:20:46] Adam Walker: That’s such a blessing. All right, Harley question for you. So you’re in your mid twenties, you just on a dime flipped from working and doing whatever 20 somethings do to working from your mom’s room.
[00:21:02] Taking care of her. How did you stay strong? How did you kinda keep going during that time?
[00:21:10] Harley Stuebgen: I think this is what my mom prepared me for my entire life, really.
[00:21:14] Adam Walker: Alright.
[00:21:15] Harley Stuebgen: This not in a I’m gonna have cancer someday kind of way in a watching my mother be, she was growing up too when she had me.
[00:21:25] I mean, we’re all living life for the first time. I grew up with my mother. I remember helping plan her 30th surprise birthday party. Like I remember so many things of watching my mom grow up. I mean, my parents, my siblings and I, we all grew up together with her moms and dads, which is great. And watching her throughout her life and seeing, how she was able to handle all of these things. I mean, she had three kids. She was 25 years old. My dad was traveling for work all the time, and then even when we got a little bit older, she went back to school, was in school full-time. My dad was working full-time and I think even a little bit then I was in third and fourth grade.
[00:22:09] And we’d wake up and she’d be gone and my dad would be asleep and someone had to make breakfast for the three of us to get on the school bus and made sure that we all had our book bags and our clothes and our shoes. And I always joked to all my friends like they learned how to do laundry at 18.
[00:22:27] I learned how to go do laundry at eight because we had to make sure our soccer uniforms and our baseball uniforms were clean and someone had to do it. And I love my brothers with my whole heart and soul. And they are sometimes a little bit lazy with that kind of stuff.
[00:22:43] And what does that do?
[00:22:46] So I think like even then, someone had to step up and say this is how it needs to be done.
[00:22:53] And I mean, I’ve had my fair share of trials and tribulations, but my mother has too. And seeing how well she was able to handle all of those things, I think helps me and also, I think I’m just, I have the perfect blend of my parents. I have this heart, like my mother, I wish it was more like hers.
[00:23:11] She’s such a great person. But I also have this like stubborn bullheadedness from my father, and I think that’s how I’m able to stay strong, but also be so helpful because I can, I know I can dish it out, but I can also help anyone whenever they need it. I say. But if I could even just be like 1% of my mother as a mom, as a friend, as a sister, like I, that would be my life dream.
[00:23:38] That’s all I want. So she’s great. She won’t tell, she won’t tell you that, but she is phenomenal. I wish she would tell people more, tell people that more often, but she doesn’t.
[00:23:49] Adam Walker: I don’t think she has to tell people. I think they probably are fully aware already. So so I, so really I guess kinda last question.
[00:23:57] I’m curious for both of you to answer what did you learn about, like something new you learned about each other during this process and how has this changed or affected your relationship?
[00:24:11] Kimberly Stuebgen: Such a tough question because there’s so many things I I learn from my daughter. She’s just, she’s so brilliant and and it’s not just Excel tricks that she teaches me, but she teaches me just how to accept help. I have a hard, I had a hard time. I sometimes still do accepting or asking for help, and she’s never afraid to do that.
[00:24:47] She she’s not afraid to admit that she needs help sometimes, and I admire that in her. I also just watched her, her feelings, her on the back burner because I know it had to be difficult watching me suffer the way that I did those first five to seven days. It was the most pain I’ve ever been in.
[00:25:17] And not being able to even use my hands. I mean, I had to, voice people were texting me and calling me, and I couldn’t even hold my phone. I had to lay it down and someone had to press a button for me to talk or leave a message. So just watching her manage all of the things that were so difficult for me just showed me how strong she is and how forgiving she is because I’m sure there were days
[00:25:53] that were really hard and I was probably not the easiest patient sometimes, but I just admire her. I always have, I’ve always been in awe of her of her stubbornness, but also her will and her drive to achieve whatever goal she sets for herself. She was working, now she’s working and she’s in grad school and planning a wedding and there’s so many things on her plate and she just manages to juggle them without dropping a ball or getting frustrated.
[00:26:33] So I just, I really have always admired the person that she is. And I’m just blessed and very proud of her.
[00:26:43] Adam Walker: That’s great.
[00:26:44] Kimberly Stuebgen: Thanks, mom.
[00:26:47] Adam Walker: How about you, Harley?
[00:26:49] Harley Stuebgen: It’s hard because I feel like I knew so much about my mother. I mean, being, there’s three of us, my, my older sibling and my younger sibling, Drew and David and my mom.
[00:27:02] Not that she doesn’t love all of her kids and not that she has a favorite because she does not. But having a daughter I think is just different. And I think having a relationship with your parent, like I’m also very close with my father, but there’s just a familiarity with my mother that I don’t have with anybody in the world.
[00:27:19] And so learning more about her in such a different way. It’s definitely eye-opening. Like I knew all of her quirks, right? I lived with her my entire life. I mean, I know all of the weird things that she does. I understand the things I like I know her preferences. I know what she’d rather be doing.
[00:27:38] I know all of that. You know what people would call first date questions. What’s your favorite color? What TV show do you wanna watch? I know all of that about my mother, like the back of my hand. That’s not the part that I learned. I think the parts that I learned were like I’ve always thought I was patient, but I think over the last year and a half I have gained so much patience, especially with my dog and my fiance who drive me nuts sometimes.
[00:28:06] I think gaining that patience from my mother has been such a blessing. I think it makes my life incredibly better and seeing her struggle. I’ve seen her struggle my entire life in a lot of different areas. And, but for her to be finally okay with who she is and like what she’s been doing and she was always trying to be better and trying to push things off and act like it wasn’t a big deal and kind of mitigate or or just ignore what was kind of going on.
[00:28:38] And I know that I forced her to accept those things, but I was forcing myself too, because there many times where even in conversation the first few weeks, my brothers wouldn’t even look at her in the face. Like it, it was hard. They couldn’t like, they would just cry and being able to hold my emotions.
[00:28:57] Because she did it for everybody. People would come up to her and cry and she was like, don’t, it’s fine. I’m good. I’m still here. I’m still Kim. Like I, nothing changed.
[00:29:08] Adam Walker: Yeah, right.
[00:29:08] Harley Stuebgen: And to see her be able to hold her emotions when typically she cannot, was really awesome to see. And I know it was hard for her.
[00:29:17] But it was hard for me like to, I know there’s so many instances when it first happened and my dad came in the, into the kitchen and his face is beat red and I’ve never seen him cry that hard in my life. Or when we took her for her surgery and her mother and my dad are standing there and they’re both bawling their eyes out.
[00:29:37] I have to carry them out the, or into the waiting room being. Being able to be that person for everybody else the way that my mom has done that for everyone ever, what? It was hard. I mean, there were so many times where I wanted to cry. I did not. I do like to raise my hand and say I was the one that never cried the entire process.
[00:29:59] And there was this one moment she, after I hadn’t left her side for two and a half weeks. And she had just gotten her drains out and she was like, Harley I’m okay. I can do a lot more things now. She goes, you have to go, Joe, my fiance, he was just my boyfriend at the time and he was, I hadn’t seen him for three weeks
[00:30:21] because I was like, I’m not, I, my mom is infinitely more important than you. I love you and my, I need to take care of my mother. And so I, my mom’s go see Joe. It’ll be okay. And I think that car ride he lived at the time, we lived about an hour and 15 minutes apart. That car ride was the first time I had fully recognized what I was doing.
[00:30:44] And it was just me in the car. I didn’t even have the radio on. I think I was just so in my own head and I was realizing that my mom did have, my mom had cancer and I was everything. And I was doing all these things and. Even realizing like the drains where I would accidentally pull her a little too hard and she would yell at me and Harley, that hurts.
[00:31:08] And there were so many like little moments where I’m like, I couldn’t imagine doing this with anybody else. Not that I would wish cancer on anyone, but I’m glad it was my mom because if it was anybody else, I don’t think anyone would’ve handled it as well either way. I don’t think she would’ve handled it as well if I wasn’t there for her.
[00:31:28] And I wouldn’t have handled it as well if it wasn’t my mom.
[00:31:31] Adam Walker: Yeah. Yeah, that’s that sound. That sounds great. Sounds like you have an amazing relationship, an amazing family, a great support network. Wow. Sounds sounds like you’re blessed, Kim. It’s pretty great. And you too, Harley, so.
[00:31:44] Harley Stuebgen: Oh, I don’t, I know it.
[00:31:47] Adam Walker: Do you have any any final thoughts you’d like to share about listeners Kim, from your perspective of being, having been a patient or Harley from your perspective of having been a caregiver? Any final thoughts you wanna share?
[00:31:58] Kimberly Stuebgen: I just, I value the importance of getting the mammograms.
[00:32:04] I I really wanna advocate to women don’t put it off, make sure that you’re getting them, because I mean, I was 47 years old and that’s young to find that you have breast cancer. So it’s just really important to make sure that you do that preventative care. Follow follow through yearly and it’s tough.
[00:32:32] It’s a very hard journey. My cancer journey was hard and it was long and it was made better by the people that I was surrounded with. So I just think that if find that support system and lean on them and don’t be afraid to ask. I think I didn’t, I stayed strong.
[00:32:58] I mean, that, I was determined. I said that from day one. I said, I’m gonna be strong and we’re gonna get through this. And we did. And I believed that every day. So supportive. You just have to have faith. Yeah. And believe that you’re gonna make it through and and that you are or you’re surrounded by love.
[00:33:17] Adam Walker: Yeah. Harley, you got any final thoughts from a caregiver’s perspective?
[00:33:22] Harley Stuebgen: Kick ass and take names. Really. You gotta push it into gear. I mean, you, do you do anything for the people that you love, right? Yeah. Especially when it’s your parent or a sibling. And yeah.
[00:33:35] I don’t wanna say I shut off my brain because I was there the whole time.
[00:33:39] I remember every second of it. But you gotta push through that sometimes. It really hard to just. Not be emotional about it, but I knew that everyone needed me more than I needed to cry. So I just kind of was pushing through and you gotta do what you gotta do. And it’s so easy to say that, but you guys, you just gotta do it.
[00:34:00] Kick ass, take names. That’s what I was doing. I still do that.
[00:34:02] Adam Walker: That’s great. That’s right. That’s the way, that’s the way well keep doing it’s motto. Yeah. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. I’m doing it Well Kim, Harley such a great opportunity and honor to get to talk to both of you. Thank you for taking the time to join us on the show today.
[00:34:15] Kimberly Stuebgen: Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Thank you.
[00:34:22] Adam Walker: Thanks for listening to Real Pink, a weekly podcast by Susan G Komen. For more episodes, visit real pink.komen.org. And for more on breast cancer, visit komen.org. Make sure to check out at Susan G Komen on social media. I’m your host, Adam. You can find me on Twitter at AJ Walker or on my blog adam j walker.com.