“I had a giant, pain-in-the-rear tumor growing for years. YEARS. I am smart and with it. I’m one of those moms who is always trying her darndest to make the very best decisions for her family. And yet, I missed a giant tumor. I had for sure felt it before. I was pregnant and nursing on and off for 8 years. My body was always changing, and I was keeping the small people alive. It was so easy to chalk it up to body changes and move on.”
‘It was not even on my radar that my lumpy boob could be a cancer boob. How naive I was.’: Mom in her 30s diagnosed with breast cancer, warns ‘Don’t be me. Don’t ignore it’
‘Mommy, I’ve been scared to say this, but I have a big bump on my chest.’ I lifted her shirt. Sheer horror!’: 8-year-old girl diagnosed with breast cancer after both parents beat cancer, ‘we are a family of fighters’
“There it was. A hard lump directly under her right nipple. ‘Honey? Please come here a minute.’ My husband and I exchanged a look of fear. It was so dark you could see it through her skin. We just hugged and bawled. ‘Not our baby girl,’ we both kept saying. ‘Mommy, what’s wrong?’ Her sweet face changed.”
‘Are we still getting married?,’ she looked at me in tears. She wanted to protect me.’: Man loses wife to stage 4 cancer months after wedding, ‘I have a huge hole in my heart’
“We had already chosen our wedding date. We had booked our venue, sent out save-the-dates. The doctors encouraged us to move it up, fearing the worst. But we decided no matter what, we weren’t changing it. 3 weeks before, she lost her hair again. ‘I fell in love with you when you were bald,’ I told her. She was absolutely stunning walking down the aisle. I felt like the luckiest person in the world. Right before her 30th birthday, we decided to give up all treatment and enjoy the time we had left.”
‘You know this isn’t a bad boob job, right?’ They saw my cancer scars and erupted in laughter.’: Woman beats breast cancer, new symptoms dismissed as ‘overreacting’ turn out to be colon cancer
“I felt so embarrassed. I started putting makeup on my scars and wearing only tube top bikinis. I started wearing a bra all the time and wouldn’t remove it during intimate times with my husband. I went from cancer free and ecstatic about the surgery results, to mortified to even show my breasts.”
‘If I die, our kids won’t remember me.’ My husband excused himself to the bathroom, literally sick to his stomach.’: Woman mistakes breast cancer for ‘clogged milk duct,’ says chemo ‘almost killed her’
“The ultrasound tech brought me a box of tissues, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘What are the tissues for?’ I asked, confused. ‘There’s an 80% chance it’s cancer.’ I was completely shell-shocked. Numb. I couldn’t get out of the room and building fast enough. While others continued living their lives, I was stuck, sick. My life was put on hold.”
‘I never thought I’d be calling my husband to inform him ‘it’s cancer.’ I sat on the phone in utter shock.’: 28-year-old woman diagnosed with breast cancer after noticing ‘blood stains in bra’
“I was too young to get cancer. There was no way. I was fit and healthy, currently in the best shape of my life training for a trip to Everest basecamp. I prepared my chemo bag. I was ready for this. But when I walked into the hospital and saw all the elderly ladies around me wearing head scarves, I instantly felt a fear I could not describe.”
‘I sat in the waiting room, eager for my big sigh of relief. It didn’t come. Like many of us, I thought I had all the time in the world. Then, I received the blow most of us fear. My heart sank.’
“I didn’t have the symptoms or risk factors. Everyone said, ‘It’s probably nothing.’ I walked up to my husband, tears in my eyes, in total shock. I worried I’d never get to see my children grow up. The fear of the unknown started taking over.”
‘As painful as this picture is for me to see, it hurts even more this could become ANY ONE OF YOU. I know I’m a lucky one.’
“Why do I show you my face? Why do I show you my pain? Why do I reveal these heart-breaking scars? I’ll tell you why.”
‘I wore red lipstick during my mastectomy. The nurses joked I looked ‘too good’ for somebody having surgery. I had a huge party the night before. I bought a wig to look like Britney Spears!’
“We can all become overwhelmed with the negativity in the world. From my experience during cancer I can tell you there is so much good. My support even came from strangers.”
‘But you don’t look sick.’ My mom said, ‘There is no way, the chances are so low, it would be very rare.’ She was right. The risk is less than one percent, but I fell into that percentage.’
“They get sad and say, ‘but you’re so young!’ You never truly know what people are going through. I had family members tell me, ‘We’re sorry for not visiting, but it was too hard to see you go through this.’ Or that seeing me would make it ‘all too real.’ It is real.”
