What's Important?

Over the last few days I have thought very hard about the message I have been asked to share at our local Making Strides Walk.  They give you a guideline; 2-3 minutes max, share your story, and tell what the pink bra means to you.  Sounds easy right?  Well finding the version of my story that fits into 2 minutes isn’t that easy.  And of course I want to share what I feel is the most important thing I’ve learned.

I’m not really sure what that is.  There are so many things I’ve learned and they all seem important to me, but the two things that stand out in my mind are knowledge and early detection.  I know both of these things are mentioned quite often.  Yet for some reason most women are completely blindsided when they hear the news that they have breast cancer.

 The majority of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer had no family history of the disease – those are not my words, but I have read them several times in various articles (none of which I can recall to paste the link – sorry).  Because of my own experience, I feel the need to find out as much as I can for early detection in younger women. 

If you are under 40 years old with no family history, and are like most women, you probably don’t even think of breast cancer on a personal level. Over the next week or two, I am going to concentrate my posts to information available for this group of women.  

But remember, gumption, may just be the best defense.

*Found "About 70-80% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer." BreastCancer.org