Check your boobs and GO with your gut.

Today is the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness month. I personally find it a hard month to get through as it reminds me of my own journey.

HOWEVER my feelings aside I believe it is so important and necessary to bring awareness of breast cancer to the public. Perhaps if I had been more aware I would have had a different outcome –

Around 23 years ago and about two years after I stopped breast feeding my youngest son I went to the Doctor as I had fluid coming out of my right breast. She dismissed it as nothing. Many years later I had cancer in that breast. Perhaps she was right and it was nothing….however she should have sent me for tests and I should have pushed not just gullibly believed everything she said.

SO PLEASE IF YOU HAVE AN UNEASY FEELING PUSH FOR TESTS.

I was best friends at primary school with three other girls – Linda,Fiona, and Elizabeth. Sometimes we pretended we were The Monkees (for the younger generation they were a singing group). Other days we were characters from Man From U.N.C.L.E.

In 2006 Linda died of secondaries. 2012 I was diagnosed with breast cancer; three years later Elizabeth was diagnosed with guess what? … breast cancer. Fiona now lives in America but came over for a work conference and the 3 of us met for lunch. Elizabeth was due to start treatment the following week so not surprisingly our conversation was largely about her forth coming treatment. On the back of this when Fiona went back to America she had a mammogram and guess what? She also had breast cancer.

I am not telling this because of the irony of the four of us having the same disease but because Fiona readily admits it was only us talking CANCER that made her go for a mammogram.

Some people hate the fact that fluffy pink depicts breast cancer. Does it matter? If ONE person goes shopping and sees the colour pink and the words BREAST CANCER and they go home and check their breasts it just may have saved one person from getting this shitty disease.

You know your breasts better then anyone so follow your instinct and NEVER listen to a Doctor who dismisses your worries and tells you your too young.

Get into the habit of checking your breasts not just in October.