Month: October 2016

Hello beautiful people.

It’s been quite a while since I last blogged. Almost all of my energy for the past four months has been spent trying to keep my head above water while I dealt with the unpleasant side effects of chemo. But it was all worth it – my MRI scans came back completely clean, meaning that chemo and the immunotherapies did their job and wiped out the cancer! Next up: double mastectomy + reconstruction, likely followed by radiation.

Now that I am emerging from the chemo fog and slowly starting to feel better, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to not just pay back all of the kindness, thoughtfulness, and generosity that has been shown to me, but also to pay it forward and use my experience to help others.

As a first step in what will probably be a lifetime of paying it forward, I figured Breast Cancer Awareness month is a good place to start. I know it’s the last day of the month, but better late than never! I have nothing against all of the cute pink paraphernalia that emerges during October every year, but I urge you to remember that breast cancer awareness is so much more than the color pink. The real message here is that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer at some point in their lives – that’s 13% of women. Thanks to huge advances in research and earlier detection, most women dealing with breast cancer will go on to lead long and healthy lives after their treatment. But there is still much work to be done (e.g., for women with Stage IV breast cancer) as well as so many other cancers out there for which we need to find a cure.

To me, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is about much more than awareness or just one month– it’s about turning awareness into action throughout the whole year. The solution starts with each one of us – read below for 3 steps you can take to turn awareness into action to help prevent breast cancer.

1. Check those lovely lady lumps.  Ladies – getting your breasts checked by your gynecologist once per year isn’t enough. My doctors estimated that my tumors could have grown to that size in just two months. I found the lump in my breast by accident, but thank God I did, because my cancer was aggressive and could have advanced to later stages quickly if I hadn’t found the lump. I never took self-exams seriously in the past because I thought I was too young to worry about breast cancer. Now I’ve learned that it can impact anyone (male or female!) of any age, and I can’t stress how important it is to perform regular breast exams. Here are my tips:

• Set a reminder in your calendar to perform a self-exam at least once per month. It takes just a few minutes! There’s even an app for it, but a regular old calendar reminder does the trick too.
• Use the self-exam as a way to get to know your body better – the more you know what “normal” feels like for your breasts, the easier it will be for you to detect abnormalities. Try to do it from a place of love and self-care rather than from a place of fear.
• Do your self-exams around the same time every month – our breasts can fluctuate, so checking them around the same time every month will make it easier to distinguish an abnormal change. Pre-menopausal woman should perform self-exams at the end of your menstrual cycle, and post-menopausal women should just choose the same day every month.
• Don’t freak out if you find something suspicious in your self-exam! More often than not, it’s not cancer and it’s not helpful to worry without having all the information. Schedule some time with your gynecologist to get it checked out.
• Check out this site for more tips and a video how-to.

2. Treat your body right. My wellness coach says that while genes are the gun, our environment is the trigger. This means that while our genes may make certain conditions or diseases more likely, it is often our lifestyle that determines whether those genes get “turned on.” The geneticist who ran my tests told me that while I did not test positive for the BRCA genes that predispose carriers for breast cancer, they think there’s likely something funky going on in my genes that was activated by something in my environment.

I give myself grace and don’t blame myself for the cancer, but it’s important for me to recognize that my lifestyle in the years leading up to my diagnosis didn’t make it easy for my body to keep those funky genes in check. While I wasn’t in poor health, for years I consistently prioritized work over eating well, sleeping well, and generally treating my body right. The good news is that our bodies are resilient and usually respond well to lifestyle changes.

I urge each of you to learn more about your bodies and be picky about what it’s exposed to – what goes in it (food, drink, smoke, etc.), what goes on it (skincare, makeup, chemicals), what it’s exposed to (air quality, stress, toxic people), and what it needs to rest and heal and do its thing (sleep, movement, mindfulness). I truly feel that this is the most important and impactful step each of us can take to help prevent cancer and other diseases – start with ourselves.

3. Invest smartly when it comes to donations. Pink is cute, and it’s been effective for Breast Cancer Awareness Month – even NFL players are sporting it! However, there’s a big difference between buying or wearing pink and actually taking action to support the search for a cure. Before donating now or during any other time of the year, consider the following steps to improve the likelihood that your generosity will support one of the many amazing and worthy organizations that are making a real impact on cancer research:

• If you decide you want to buy some of that cute pink paraphernalia for yourself or a loved one, first find out whether the proceeds of the sale actually go to breast cancer research or support breast cancer patients.
• Before donating to an organization or participating in a walk/race for breast cancer, do your research to find out what you’re specifically supporting. What will be done with the funds raised, and how are these programs actually making a difference in finding a cure and supporting survivors?
• Check out this link from Think Before You Pink for a more complete guide for being a conscious consumer when it comes to supporting cancer research.

Thank you all for your continued love and support!