Healthy Living

This morning, my oldest sister, Robin, was diagnosed with breast cancer. I am sharing this story, not to get sympathy, but so you are aware.



Robin is very much on top of her heath. She has had a mammagram every year for years. She didn't have a lump. She wasn't sick. She went with a friend who had never had a yearly mammagram, to encourage her to start taking better care of herself. The technician saw something on the film that looked strange and mailed her a letter to follow up with her doctor. Fortunately, she is a hypochondriac and did so immediately. She had another mammagram done and her doctor saw such small irregularities that the film needed to be magnified 20 times so she could see it. It showed small granules, the size of grains of sand, called calcifications. Her doctor told her it may be nothing, but she would rather send her off for additional testing to be sure. She had a biopsy done at the request of her doctor and the technician preforming the biopsy couldn't even find anything in the spot that was circled on the film, even wearing magnified glasses with the computer screen that was aiding in the biopsy magnified. The technician took a sample in the area anyway to send to the lab.



THAT area tested positive for the abnormal cells that can become breast cancer.



Her prognosis is good. Because she caught it so early, it's classified as stage zero. She will be treated and monitored by her doctor and specialist and I am confident she will make a full recovery. Her best friend died exactly a year ago from breast cancer. By the time she got the courage to go see her doctor, she had a lump the size of a lime in her breast. The cancer quickly spread to other parts of her body and she died a slow agonizing death. Before she died, she told my sister she had that lump for almost a year before she saw a doctor. Who knows how the outcome of her treatment would have been if she would have saw a doctor immediately. But unfortunately, for so many black women, medical ignorance is bliss.



So please take heed to this bulletin. Do your regular monthly exams. If you are over forty or have a family history please get mammagrams. Most of all, is you know someone who isn't taking care of themselves the way they should, forward this message to them.



http://www. circleofpromise. org/


Thank you for reading.