Get your minds out of the gutter ladies ‘cause this could just save your life! I was in the salon the other day (funny what goes down in the salon apart from hair) and happened to overhear a well dressed and probably loaded lady tell someone how she’s been avoiding a friend who’s down with breast cancer “before it would be her turn” as she put it. Horrible friend right, but what got to me was the ideology in her words; like cancer is contagious. I felt like setting her straight right at that moment and enlightening her on the little I know about the disease (not like I’m a doctor!), but we all have a bit of cowardice in us all and I didn’t want my new weave pulled out with my scalp right after getting it done. It made me realize that even in this age when everyone knows a bit about everything, most women still haven’t made the effort to find out about most of things that could happen to you that your mother didn’t tell you about.
Now in layman terms which is all I know, cancer is basically when your normal body cells go into hyper drive and grow like no man’s business. The cells form a malignant mass which keeps coming back (at the late stage) no matter how many times you take it out and could eventually kill you. There is no known reason for breast cancer but a lot of possible causes include your diet, hereditary occurrence (a close relative who’s had the disease), obesity and lack of exercise etc. You can search for lumps which may be a sign of breast cancer by feeling the skin of your breasts to under your armpits where the lymph nodes are. There are charts available in health centres and health-based websites which show you how to feel for lumps. Don’t start hyperventilating yet if you find a lump because our boobies tend to be lumpy during some phase of our cycle and besides any lump found could be benign. However, please see your doctor as soon as possible if you do find a lump.
My said experience in the salon made me enquire from the ladies I know if they are aware of the basics of breast cancer, how to search for a lump and how many times they do so. The answers I got were mostly yes to the first two questions and not so frequent on the ‘lump search’. That was an eye-opener for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being judgemental or hypocritical, in fact the only reason why I check my boobies out regularly (no, not because I’m into myself.. eww) might be because I have endured the breast cancer scare myself and have a close relative who survived breast cancer. The day I found not one but two lumps in one breast was the scariest day of my life (fortunately I went to the doctor and found out they were benign – phew!!). At that point I was thinking “Oh God, please I’m too young to have breast cancer”, but the reality is that there is no definite age marker for it. Yes it’s more probable as you get older but there are known cases of people in their twenties who’ve been through it (I happen to know a girl that got breast cancer when she was a teenager).
So as you sit there reading this article, I hope it serves as a reminder. The next time you’re taking a shower or putting on that sexy lingerie for your man, just take a second to ‘feel your boobies’. As they say, a stitch in time saves nine.
