Alison McCullough was in the best shape of her life when she found a lump under her arm while shaving. She was set to be a model at New York Fashion Week in September 2025, so she had spent the past several months focusing on her physique. She knew her body well, and she knew what a bump like this might mean.
McCullough, then 39, wanted to get it checked out, but getting care was harder than she expected: A mobile mammogram provider turned her away because she wasn’t 40, when the American Cancer Society recommends women start receiving regular mammograms. She had to get a referral from her primary care provider, but the wait for an appointment was long. In her home state of Alaska, there weren’t a lot of other options.
“I had to jump through the hoops,” McCullough said. “It’s quite a long process when you feel like time is of the essence.”
Alison McCullough
While she waited, McCullough tried to avoid looking up the worst-case scenarios. Her appearance at New York Fashion Week was a “great distraction.” Finally, nearly two months after finding the lump, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.
“I was shocked, and every time I got new information, it was worse information. I went from ‘Yes, you have breast cancer’ to ‘It’s an invasive cancer, and you have the BRCA-2 gene, and your cancer is triple negative, which means it’s harder to treat,'” McCullough said. “In my mind, I thought … they’d cut it out and I’d be on my way. But then I found out, no, you need chemotherapy, you’re going to lose all your hair, and it just escalated. I felt like, ‘Am I ever gonna get good news?'”
An intimidating diagnosis
McCullough was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, which accounts for between 10% and 15% of all breast cancer cases, said Dr. Erica Mayer, director of breast cancer clinical research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Mayer was not involved in McCullough’s care.
Triple negative means the cancer is negative for three different receptors: estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and HER2 receptors. Knowing which receptors a tumor is positive or negative for allows doctors to tailor treatments specifically to those targets, Mayer said.
Alison McCullough 
A triple-negative tumor has none of the receptors, so it can’t be treated with most targeted therapies. Instead, patients can try traditional methods including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, or newer approaches like immunotherapy and targeted chemotherapy delivery drugs called antibody drug conjugates. Treatment advances mean “our patients are doing better today than they ever have before, with a much greater chance of being cured of their disease,” Mayer said.
Still, McCullough was scared to learn that her treatment options were more limited than she’d thought they’d be. Then she learned the infusion center where she was set to begin receiving chemotherapy wouldn’t be able to see her for over a month. After her delay in diagnosis, she feared any more waiting would be deadly.
“I was sitting there and my husband, he’s like, ‘This cancer is growing. It’s been over a month. You’re still not on the schedule,'” McCullough recalled. The two decided it was time “to start thinking farther away.”
“I hung in there”
McCullough and her husband began looking at other options and learned about City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment organization with facilities in four states. McCullough called the organization’s Phoenix, Arizona, office on a Friday, and expected to wait days for a response. But she heard back within hours.
“They said, ‘If you can get here by next week, Wednesday, we will have our whole team meet with you and come up with a plan and get you right in,'” McCullough recalled. “So two days later, my husband and I were on a flight.”
McCullough met with the oncology team at City of Hope, who agreed with the treatment plan her oncologist in Alaska had developed. All of her appointments would be at one facility, which wouldn’t have been the case in Alaska. McCullough said it was a relief to not be “driving around in snow and ice trying to find every single appointment.”
Instead of waiting weeks, it was just “a couple of days” before she began treatment. The six-month regimen involved two forms of chemotherapy. The first three months had few side effects, she said, while the next three “slowed (her) down a bit.”
“I had a hard time grasping what it was like to be immunocompromised. But I hung in there,” McCullough said. “Before, I had been preparing for Fashion Week, but there was something bigger that I was about to have to fight for. It was a good thing, going into my cancer journey, that I was as strong as I was.”
Alison McCullough 
“A big win” and “the best news”
McCullough finished chemotherapy in March. That alone, she said, felt like “a big win, because not everybody makes it to the end.” To prevent recurrence, her doctors recommended a double mastectomy. McCullough underwent that procedure in late April. She was warned she might still need radiation or long-term oral chemotherapy, but in May, her oncologist gave her some surprising news: McCullough was cancer-free.
“It was the best news,” McCullough said.
The milestone allowed McCullough to begin reconstructive surgery. She was also finally able to return to her home state: In early June, she moved back to Alaska just in time to celebrate her son’s 12th birthday.
McCullough said that spending time with family is her top priority as she recovers. She also plans to get back in the gym — and even return to the runway, where she hopes to share her story.
“I do see glimmers of fashion shows and pageantry again in my future!” McCullough said. “Those things help keep me accountable physically, but also provide a path to share my story with the next person that needs hope.”