I remember being in the room with my mom when she got her biopsy. I remember I was exceptionally calm. I was optimistic. I just knew she didn’t have breast cancer. I didn’t even take the whole procedure seriously until I saw her crying. My mother is not one to cry too easily. But even after the tears, I just figured she was scared at the thought of having cancer.
Apparently she knew more than I did.
Her lump was indeed cancerous. And in the next few months my mom was in and out of the hospital, first for her lumpectomy and then six weeks of chemotherapy and then radiation.
Luckily our family breast cancer story ends happily in that her cancer has been in remission for what will be three years in December. A blessing.
One of the reasons my mother was able to walk away from this cancer ordeal was because she didn’t ignore the signs her body was giving her.
Too often black women like to ignore the fact that our bodies are telling us something isn’t right. We especially have to listen to those signs considering that African American women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women and we’re more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age. (Source)
During the month of October, Breast Cancer Awareness month, we’ll be educating you about the disease, how it’s different in black women and what you should be doing to protect yourself from it.
