Breast cancer: a journey to discovery.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and here we take you on a journey through the eyes of a daughter discovering the disease and discussing what we can do to help.
Steps of self examination:
Check your breasts
in front of a mirror for any symptoms or abnormalities.
Check your nipples
Position yourself in bed
which leads to a more even
distribution of your breast tissue.
In a sitting or standing position, use the pads of the three middle fingers to examine using light, medium,
and deep pressure.
Examining starts at the collarbone and continues down and up the entire breast in a vertical pattern.
Since we sniffed it out early, the operation was just a simple excision. We were scared before the operation but the doctors reassured us and got us to calm down. After the operation, my mom rested in the hospital and our doctor came to check in on us and see how she was doing mentally and physically.
Our doctor guided us through the stages of recovery and helped us get back on our feet. Even after the operation, mom still checks for lumps once every month to make sure there are no recurrences.
She taught me how to check and now I do it every month with her, and I even taught some of my friends and raised awareness among my classmates.
I can't be more grateful for the help the doctors offered and I realized that I have a part to play. We all do. There is no superman or spiderman in our world. We have to rise up, and be our own heroes.
