Well here we are – This past Friday, marked exactly two years from the day that I heard the words “You have breast cancer”. February 7th, 2018. And of course, I remember the day vividly. Every detail still fresh in my memory. I remember not being able to stop crying after I left the doctor’s office. I remember looking at my desk at work and trying to think of everything I needed to take with me because I knew I wasn’t going to return back anytime soon. I remember my ride back on the streetcar, holding a birthday gift I had been given a few days prior and already seeing a past life as I looked down at it, a past Diana, and hit with the thought of how my life will never been the same from that moment on. I remember thinking over and over again the question in my head of “why me?”. I remember every moment of those early days, yet somehow I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night – strange how the mind works.
Sometimes I forget how truly lucky I am to have somehow managed to catch my lump in my breast on my own, and at such an early stage. You almost can’t call it luck – It feels more powerful than that. I had a terrifying thought recently that shook me to my core, which was that if I hadn’t found the lump, and it was left undetected, there is a decent chance that I wouldn’t have made it to today, a mere two years after my diagnosis.
In July of 2019, I had my first experience of having to see someone I know succumb to the disease, whom I got to know through connecting on Instagram. She was a one-of-a-kind beautiful soul, and the world lost her. She had found her cancer late, about a year late in fact. By the time she was properly diagnosed, the cancer had spread all over her body.
And no, this post is not meant to be some sad sympathy-seeking post. It’s meant to wake us all up from our naïve slumber and to empower us to be our own advocates of our health.
I think a huge misconception of Breast Cancer is that everyone thinks it’s a “treatable” cancer. Which it is, and can be even curable, but ONLY if it’s found EARLY.
I recall being confused when someone told me their mom had breast cancer and passed away from it. I didn’t understand how that was possible. How did she die from having cancer in her breast?
Now, I am acutely aware of how she died. The cancer had spread outside of the breast. The evil cancer cells decided one day that they were going to leave the breast and travel to the armpit where they made a new home in multiple lymph nodes. Then they got bored and decided to continue on through the lymphatic system and eventually made their way to the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the bones, the brain, you name it. Breast cancer left untreated eventually becomes full-body-cancer.
With early detection though, you have an incredible chance to stop the cancer in its tracks before it even thinks about reaching its first lymph node victim! By attacking it at this early stage, you keep it contained in the breast.
THIS is why early detection is SO IMPORTANT. And THIS is why you should always maintain a routine of checking yourself and getting to know your own body so you can advocate for it when something doesn’t seem/feel right.
You need to stop believing that you are an exception to life’s adversity. You need to acknowledge your fear of it (whether it’s breast cancer or something else) and look it straight in the face so that you can take the right steps to ensure a healthy long life ahead of you. After my best friend passed away from Leukemia, I thought statistics would safeguard me. What are the chances that both of us would get cancer under 30?! I dare you to look up those chances, I bet you they are something around 0.005%. But, here we are.
You are not invincible, you are not an exception, and you are not going to get out of this life unscathed. But what you CAN be, is you can be smart, educated and proactive. You can take the measures necessary to act early and safeguard yourself from this terrible disease (or any other life adversity). You’re already taking a step in the right direction by reading this post!
I remember a while back I saw an Instagram post from someone I used to know in high school and they talked about their friend having been diagnosed with Breast Cancer at age 28. I can tell you that this story came rushing back to me when I first found my lump. My mind was confused and was thinking naïve thoughts of “well I’m only 28, so the chances of this being breast cancer is crazy!!” but then I remembered that post and it occurred to me that while the chances were lower than low, they were still there. It ultimately prompted me to get it checked out.
And here I am today – seemingly very healthy and cancer free – for now, anyways. But that wouldn’t be the case if I hadn’t acted on it and took a very very VERY small statistic and fearfully believed the terrifying chance that it could be me.
I titled this post “Check your boobs on the 7th” because there is campaign for breast cancer called “Feel it on the 1st” which prompts people to get into a routine of checking themselves for lumps on the 1st of every month. I find the title confusing though, and if you live in a non-cancer world you likely wouldn’t know what it was referring to, and you’d be like “but, feel what?”. So, for all you fortunate people that don’t have your Instagram filled with other women going through breast cancer and cancer-related posts, I have made the title EXTRA clear. Also, I was diagnosed on the 7th, so the message I want to convey is that it can happen at any time, at any age, and to anyone.
So check your boobs on the 1st, check them on the 7th, check them when you’re 25, check them when you’re 50, do it all!
1 in every 8 women are diagnosed with Breast Cancer in their lifetime.
ONE in EIGHT.
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