My Breast Cancer Story

We here at Healing at Your Core and at Eilara Pelvic Health are very passionate about women's health, and we feel that it would be a disservice if we didn't spend some time talking about breast cancer.

It's something that's near and dear to our hearts here, as I am personally a breast cancer survivor.

It's been a- almost 15 years since my diagnosis, and, um, something that I really want to discuss and share a little bit of my experience, and also encourage others to listen to your body, to listen to what you know, and to follow those instincts when things just don't quite seem right.

So starting my journey, um, it was September of 2011, and I was a new mom to one-year-old twins, almost one-year-old twins, boy and a girl, and we had prayed vivaciously for these little babies.

We struggled with some infertility and had to take Clomid in order to get pregnant, and ended up being 1 of the 3% increase that get twins when we're on Clomid, and it was such a crazy and hectic time.

My kiddos never did do great with breastfeeding, so I ended up pumping, uh, breast milk for them.

Um, I remember that I got a clogged milk duct, and this clogged milk duct, um, was a pretty significant one, but I was finally able to get it to clear.

And once I got the clogged milk duct to clear, there was a lump in my breast that I never really did get to go away.

But I was just watching it and monitoring it.

Um, as I'd been pumping, I was massaging my breast tissue quite a bit in order to, um, help express more milk.

So I was pretty familiar with what my breast felt like at this time, and I knew that this lump was new.

But being that my twins were almost a year and I was going to be working on weaning down the amounts of milk that I was, was providing, um, I decided to just wait.

So I waited and right in October, kind of middle of October, we, we weaned, and then I waited a month after we had weaned in order to kind of assess things.

So come the, like, end of November, I believe, I was like, "Okay, this lump is still here, and it hasn't changed size," and so I went to my OB's office to get it checked out.

And I went in for the exam.

They did a breast exam and found the lump and knew what I was talking about.

For me, um, it sounded silly, but it was almost like a marble that I could chase underneath my skin.

Um, kind of like you move your kneecap back and forth, like it would kind of wiggle and move, um, and it felt like about a marble size, like a standard marble.

That's about what mine felt like.

And, uh, they sent me for an ultrasound, and I got the ultrasound done, and I remember the ultrasound tech, um, giving me some guidance to where it's like, "Okay, it has smooth edges.

Um, it's looking pretty good." Cancer tends to have more jagged edges.

But they did say that there was... that they would send these back, um, to the physician and, um, we actually...

Trying to think.

They had me follow up with a general surgeon.

So I did the ultrasound, and then they scheduled an appointment with a general surgeon for me.