“Strong Women Wear Pink”

What do you think when you think the color pink?

Girls – dresses, frills, princesses.

Animals – pigs, flamingos, salmon.

Medicine – Pepto Bismol.

Cancer awareness – breast cancer.

When I was 5 years old, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time. She was 26, young by any standards. After rounds of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, she went into remission.

She relapsed two years later, at 28. After more surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, medications, hair loss and long, hard days and nights, my mom showed her strength and came out on top, again. She’s been in remission ever since – a 22-year cancer survivor. She is a warrior and I’m so lucky to have her in my life.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that we were very close to losing her during her very first surgery. It was more complicated than they’d anticipated – she was under anesthesia for 22 hours. The knowledge then would have been horrifying. As a teenager, it scared me and made me even more grateful that we had a blessed outcome.

So how did my mother having breast cancer affect my life?

After her initial diagnosis, we joined the Relay for Life as a family to raise money for the American Cancer Society. She got to meet and connect with other survivors who could truly understand everything she had experienced. The Relay became our family tradition. Every summer, no matter where we were living, we at the very least attended the event, but it was more common for us to have a team and occasionally be on the Event Leadership Team.

I became more aware of the importance of self-breast exams, especially once I hit high school. It was always in the back of my mind that I have a higher risk of getting breast cancer at some point in my life because of my mom’s diagnosis, even though – we learned later – her form of breast cancer is not genetic. When I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) at age 20, we did genetic testing on me to confirm that I do not carry any of the genetic markers typically associated with breast cancer – over 30 genes.

Now, just because I don’t carry the markers for breast cancer, doesn’t mean I don’t have a higher risk. I don’t consume a lot of soy – a pseudo-estrogen – because of it’s affect on my PCOS symptoms and because my mom’s breast cancer was estrogen-receptive. Essentially, estrogen fed her cancer’s growth.

Last July, in keeping up with my self-exams, I found a breast mass what felt like fairly close to the surface. Needless to say, given my mother found her own tumor, I had a full-blown panic attack. The only person I told was my dad who has a talent of calming me down and getting me to think logically. His advice was to wait a few months, monitor the mass and if it changed, got bigger or I developed any of the other physical indicators of a malignant (cancerous) mass, to make an appointment with my primary care doctor.

Months passed and the mass didn’t seem to get any larger, but also didn’t get smaller, so in November, just to be on the safe side, I made an appointment with my doctor. From there, due to my family history, I went for an ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy. Then to an MRI, surgical consult, and another biopsy.

My surgeon walked me through every scenario from a lumpectomy to a mastectomy and chemotherapy. While the amount of information I was given a lot, it was delivered in a very matter-of-fact way which left no room for self-sabotaging anxiety. There was still some anxiety, until I got the final results from my second biopsy, which came back benign.

With a benign result, my surgeon felt safe in prescribing annual MRI and mammograms as preventative measures, as well as an appointment with the Cancer Risk Center. My overall breast cancer risk, determined by a variety of factors including my age, family history and that I’ve already had a mass, is 32 percent – higher than the typical 13 percent risk for individual women.

At my 6-month MRI check-up, my mass was completely gone. I cannot tell you the relief I felt, and that of my family. But you know what? I was never afraid that I had cancer. I knew that if my mass had been malignant, I have a better role model that I could have possibly asked for – she beat cancer…twice! I knew that if I had to face the worst-case scenario, I already had a great team of doctors and the unending support of my family. I would never be alone.

All of this to say, October is breast cancer awareness month – a month dedicated to ensuring men and women know how and how often to do self-breast exams, some of the physical symptoms of breast cancer, what resources may be available, particularly through the American Cancer Society and other organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

But for someone like me, someone who learned the harsh reality of breast cancer at a young age, every month is breast cancer awareness month. Every month, every self-exam, every Relay for Life event, every day.

The stories we hear tend to focus on survivors and their journeys – all stories worth telling and learning from and supporting. But we rarely hear about the scares – the times when you start planning for a potential new reality, wondering how your life will change, what adjustments you’ll make, what you’ll lose.

Then learning that your life will not change in the way you expect – you’ll be more cautious, more vocal, make life changes to help with preventative health.

Tell your story. Learn from others. Be aware of the signs and symptoms. If you think you feel something or there’s some change, talk to your doctor. Be kind to one another.