GEORGETOWN COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – One Carvers Bay High School teacher overcame aggressive breast cancer in both breasts after she was able to detect it early with regular mammograms, and had the support of her family and friends throughout it all.

Resource teacher Holly Fesperman says instead of survivor, she’d rather be called lucky in her fight with breast cancer.

From left to right: Holly’s husband, Eddie, her daughter Hannah, Holly and her son, Elijah.

She says while fighting breast cancer, all she wanted to be able to do again was go right back to Carvers Bay High School to teach her kids.

“I remember, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t, and the first thing I thought about is, yes, I can go back to school,” she said.

After fighting off breast cancer, Fesperman is back doing what she loves, teaching at Carvers Bay High School. Tuesday night, Carvers Bay High Principal Larry Odom told Fesperman to come to the volleyball game.

“They all had on these pink t-shirts, and I thought wow, you know, they’re gonna give me a t-shirt, and it turned into a little bit more than that,” said Fesperman.

When Principal Larry Odom asked Fesperman to come to the Carvers Bay High volleyball game, she had no idea that she would be recognized with flowers and a check from a breast cancer fundraiser, set up by the volleyball team.

Rival volleyball teams and coaches from Carvers Bay High and Georgetown High Schools honored her with flowers and a check that would later go to make a final payment on one of Fesperman’s medical bills.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer on November 20th of last year.

“I think the scariest moments for me during all of that, were when the house was quiet, and everybody was asleep, and you’re alone, and you think I want to see my children get married, you know, I want to see those things,” she said.

Dr. Angela Mislowsky at Tidelands Health Breast Center says Fesperman’s decision to have regular mammograms was critical in catching the cancers before they spread.

The cancer was so aggressive that a lumpectomy was no longer an option, so she went in for a double mastectomy. She remembers the day she got the news side by side with her husband, Eddie.

“The day that we went in to get the news, I said to him where are we going to eat, because we’ll be in and out of here in a flash,” said Fesperman. “That’s what I expected to hear. I expected to hear everything’s fine.”