A Cancer Survivor's Perspective, Ten Years Beyond Diagnosis

In December of this year, I will be free of breast cancer for 10 years. Needless to say, it was somewhat of a shock when I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in 1997. Why it wasn't a total shock was that I was beginning to see changes in my breast over a year before the diagnosis. I felt the lump and actually saw a "dimpling" or indentation in part of my left breast that should have screamed out to my doctor that something was wrong. I was very lucky that the tumor that had been growing over that year was not very aggressive. My doctor at the time missed the signs, and the radiologist misdiagnosed the change in my breast as "benign."

Once the diagnosis was certain, I went through a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. I worked full-time during my treatment, and lived my life like everyone else. The normalcy in my life was just punctuaed every three weeks by a few days of nausea and fatigue, and I had to leave work an hour early everyday for seven weeks for my radiation sessions. During the first year or so after the treatment, I did panic a little when a felt an odd pain here or there. But as time went on, what I went through was like a dream.

My experience of the diagnosis and treatment has led me to try to help others who are facing a breast cancer diagnosis. For the past six years, I have volunteered with the American Cancer Society as a Reach to Recovery volunteer. Reach to Recovery is a program that matches newly diagnosed breast cancer patients with those that have already been through it. The breast cancer survivors in the program can guide the newly diagnosed through the medical system so that the newly diagnosed know what questions to ask, the importance of second opinions, and can gain an understanding of all of the "new" terminology they will hear, such as: tumor stage versus tumor grade, etc.

Just yesterday, news broke in New York City that a 35 year-old single mom was mistakenly diagnosed with breast cancer and had had a double mastectomy. When you are going through tests to diagnose something suspicious in your breast, or something anywhere in your body, this is what you must do: