Listen Up Ladies!!!

This time last year I was preparing myself physically and mentally to have an abnormality removed from my right breast. Ok, so not something, most women want to talk about, but hey, LISTEN UP ladies. Do you conduct routine breast self examinations? Do you make and KEEP your annual mammography appointments? Do you get regular pap smears? Well if you don’t it’s time you make a change. Breast cancer is a real threat to the women of this world, young and old, and our best odds are to catch it early.

That is what happened to me.

In November of 2007, I went in for a routine mammogram and my test results came back abnormal. They found three tiny micro calcifications in my right breast and one in my left breast. They were very teeny tiny but suspicious. My radiologist gave me the option of waiting 6 months and checking again to see if there are any changes, or to have the areas biopsied. Well, I took the biopsies. It’s was probably nothing I told myself, but I had a gut feeling and thought better safe than sorry. Well guess what, it turned out to be something. My doctor told me I had atypical ductal hyperplasia, essentially the calcification was one stage removed from cancer. The doctor’s recommended that I have the area surgically removed. I did that last year on February 14th, Happy Valentine’s Day! Since my ordeal, my best friend was also diagnosed with breast cancer. She is in her mid-twenties and would have never thought in a million years that it could happen to her, but it did. After almost one year of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation she is on her way to a full recovery.

My point in sharing this story is this: Had I not had kept my appointment and blown off my mammogram like I so desperately wanted to do things may have turned out differently. Early detection is the key.

Have you hugged your breasts today?

This has been a public service announcement.

Hugs to all you wonderful women out there!