My Personal Experiences with Breast Cancer

When I was a freshman in high school, I barely knew what breast cancer was, just that it was a form of cancer that primarily affected women. I had never really thought about it, and I had never really thought that something like that culd ever affect me or someone I loved. But it did. My freshman year of high school, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckily, the tumor wasn't so large that it had begun to spread, but it wa large enough to cause the doctors to perform a mastectomy. I remember going to her house after school during the week and helping her get around once she'd been released from the hospital. To this day, I still see that little clear plastic tube that was attached to her lymph nodes that caught all the drainage from her incision--the place where she once had a breast. That tube sickened me. I could barely look at it without feeling queasy. But it wasn't so much the yucky yellow stuff mixed with blood in that tube that me me queasy, it was more the fact that my mema was in pain and that this stuff was coming out of her, because she'd had cancer, and had had it removed from her body. The thought that I could have lost my mema disturbed and saddened me, and also served as a reality check. It was like something just hit me over the head one day and made me aware of breast cancer, and that it could indeed affect my family.

Around the same time, my great-aunt (my mema's sister) was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Unlke Mema, though, Aunt Annie had failed to go to her doctor and have a mammogram done when she first noticed something wrong with her breast. When she did finally go to the doctor about it, they suggested she have the breast completely removed. She didn't. Instead, she opted to have the tumor removed while leaving the breast intact. By the time she had the tumor removed, though, the cancer had already begun to spread throughout her entire body. It eventually spread to her lungs, and then to her brain. She passed away on August 16, 2001.

The facts and horrors of breast cancer didn't truly hit me in their entirety until this past summer, when my mom went to have her first mammogram done at the age of 41 (for some reason, her gynocologist had felt there was no need for her to get a mammogram before the age of 40, even with a mother and an aunt who had both been stricken by breast cancer). A few days after having the mammogram done, Mom received a phone call from the radiologist's office saying that they had discovered an abnormality in her left breast and that she needed to come back in for more tests. I went with her, knowing that, no matter what, I was going to be by my mother's side, whether this turn out good or bad. I sat in that waiting room for what seemed like years before she came back out and told me all the procedures they'd done, including an ultrasound. It was during that ultrasound that a lump in her right breast was discovered. A lump that the mammogram hadn't detected just a couple of weeks earlier. We were shocked. After having a biopsy done and getting back "inconclusive results," Mom decided to simply have the lump removed from her right breast. This entire time, though, she kept saying to me, "Aubrey, I have cancer, I know I do." It took everything in me to keep from crying, and all I could say was, "Mom, don't think like that." You see, she was so positive about it, because she had first discovered that lump back in January, when it had barely been there. By July, it had grown to the size of a very large grape, if not a little larger. About a week after having the lump removed, Mom went back to the surgeon (the same surgeon who had removed Mema's breast) and that's when we found out that the lump they'd removed hadn't just been a fibroid cyst or something simple and harmless. It had in fact been a pre-cancerous tumor that was rapidly growing in her body. If she hadn't had that mammogram when she did, if she had waited just one month or two, my mother would have been the third woman in my family to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, though, as a result of this, she has to go every six months to have a mammogram and an ultrasound done, with a concentration on her left breast (the right was the one with the lump) since they had found an abnormality in it. The doctors still aren't sure what that abnormality is. I just hope it isn't cancer.

As a result of all this, I have felt compelled to learn everything I can about breast cancer, and to attempt in my own ways to promote breast cancer awareness. As a college student, there isn't a lot I can do monetarily, but I can raise awareness simply by the pink ribbons I have pinned to my backpack--three of them, for every woman in my family who has been affected. I can also use this website, and my other websites, to promote awareness for a disease that too few people know about and that too many people ignore. And all I can really ask, of anyone, is that you don't ignore breast cancer. It can strike men, too, just as it strikes women. It can be treated, and it can cause death. But the key to living beyond breast cancer is detection--and early detection at that. Every woman, from the age of 15 and up, should know how to perform a breast self-examination. Every woman should trace her family history and find out if and how many women in her family tree have been victims of breast cancer. Every man should also know how to perform a breast self-examination, for his sake and for the sakes of the women he cares about. Breast cancer isn't something to play around with, and it isn't something to be ignored. Any woman, anywhere, could be diagnosed with breast cancer at any given moment. And the next one could be you, it could be your mother, you grandmother, your best friend, your wife, your daughter, your lover, your aunt...anyone can be diagnosed, just as anyone can help detect it before it's too late simply by knowing the facts and knowing a simple procedure like a breast self-examination.