What's Your Worth

You are not your hair, your ass, your boobs or any other physical trait. It's something that we all need to take to heart and please...don't raise your daughters to believe that their looks are more important than their character.   

A person's self-worth is not determined by their looks. 

If you have defined yourself by your boobs and your hair, get breast cancer and lose both, you will have no self left. 

Not only that but we are so much more than our looks! 

Do you know who you are? What you stand for? What matters most to you? What you are willing to walk through fire for? 

Seriously, cancer treatment is difficult enough without having to redefine who you are in the middle of it. 

Personally, my boobs were too small to be a defining factor and honestly, my hair always irritated me. 

For me, losing both was not a hardship. 

Unlike most other female cancer patients I have met, I liked being bald...especially in the summer. 

Hair is hot. 

I've suffered from hot flashes for seven years and not having hair was such a blessing. It's been a year since my last chemo so it's grown in but I'm still dealing with the chemo curl (feels like standard poodle hair) and once again, I'm sweating. 

But I digress...

Let's talk about self-worth. 

Self-worth and self-esteem are not the same thing. 

According to the University of North Carolina Wilmington "Self-worth is the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others. Self-worth is often confused with self-esteem, which relies on external factors such as successes and achievements to define worth and can often be inconsistent leading to someone struggling with feeling worthy."

If you want people's take-away to be, "she has a great rack" you are concentrating on the external factors and headed for trouble. 

Unless you have money like Dolly Parton and can get nipped and tucked whenever you feel like, time and gravity are your enemy. 

If you are judging yourself based on your looks your esteem's days are numbered.  

How many times have you heard things like, "Looks can be deceiving"? Just because something looks good doesn't mean that it is. 

Pretty does not always equal good. 

We've all known the person who thinks they are better than everyone because they look better. All of my high school years come to mind. Often the "mean girls" are beautiful but treat others as if they are lesser beings because they aren't as physically attractive. 

Well ladies, just wait until that 30 year reunion! 

A person with a well defined self-worth will not tolerate being treated poorly by others nor with they have to knock others down to elevate themselves. 

Someone with low self-esteem will make poor relationship choices, sabatoge relationships and settle for a bad relationship as a trade for financial security. 

Does this mean that you should never tell your daughters they are pretty? No! 

https://www.psychologytools.com/self-help/low-self-esteem/

Should you emphasize brains and accomplishments over looks? Absolutely! 

According to Cancer.gov 12.9% of the women born in the US will develop breast cancer. 

The number one risk factor for developing breast cancer is... Being Female! 

Yup! You read that right. 

Being a woman is the greastest risk factor of developing breast cancer. In fact, 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer. 

Think about eight women closest to you...have any had breast cancer? 

Less than 5% of the women who develop breast cancer are linked to genetic mutations all the rest are environmental. 

From 2004 to 2018 breast cancer rose .3% which means that 502,500 more women were diagnosed than in the decade before that. 

Could be that early detection is better but...so much of what is allowed in food, cleaning products and even the water supply is also linked to cancers. 

According to a study published in the National Library of Medicine, "The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) regularly publishes lifetime risks of being diagnosed with each type of cancer.2 According to these estimates, the lifetime risk of all invasive cancers in the USA is 42.05% and 37.58% for men and women, respectively."

Those are some pretty scary numbers! 

While not all cancers cause external physical changes, many of the treatments do...especially in the case of breast cancers. 

Defining who you are by your physical traits is already a slippery slope to begin with but ladies, with a 37.58% chance of getting a cancer and eduring a treatment that includes chemo, women who have been raised to believe that their worth equals their looks are subject to even greater psychological damage. 

The emotional and mental battle that comes with battling cancer is already hard, let's not make it worse by raising daughters who have a badly defined sense of self to begin with!

Not A Dream

If I didn't have the scars to prove that I had breast cancer, I'd think the last year of my life was just a bad dream.  

I know that I had cancer. I know that I had a double mastectomy. I know that I endured chemo and a year of Herceptin infusions.

But now that it's over, it feels like it was just a long, strange, bad dream.  

For more than a year cancer consumed my life. 

And now it doesn't...at all. 

From the day I found the lump to the day I got my port out, there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think about it or have to plan for my next appointment/treatment/surgery...whatever. 

It was all-consuming. 

I went from "knowing" the term breast cancer to having a working knowledge of the types of cancers, grades and stages. 

The learning curve was steep but necessary. 

I didn't just need to know that I had cancer, I needed to understand the treatment and the reasoning behind the procedures. I trusted my doctors but needed to verify what they were doing as well. 

The time between diagnosis and surgery felt like an eternity. 

In actuality it was approximately six weeks. 

Time felt like it was dragging. The nagging fear that the cancer would rear up and consume my entire body while I bounced from appointment to appointment was real and terrifying. 

In the blink of an eye life turned into a nightmare. 

Think about it, I had showered, dried off and was applying moisturizer when I found a lump. I immediately called the doctor and began a whirlwind of appointments. 

After the diagnosis life became a blur of tests, scans and consultations. 

Once they confirmed that it was cancer I was ready to have them cut my boobs off the next day. Hearing that there is something growing in your body that wants to kill you is terrifying. 

Not only did I want the cancer out of my body but I have a family, a life that was going on around me and a business to run. I needed to get treatment overwith so I could move on. 

But, cancer is really inconvenient. 

My focus went from family and business to diagnosis, testing and treatment and recovery. 

For 12 consecutive weeks, I underwent chemo and 48 hours later (once the steroids wore off) I would spend a couple of days in bed. After that I would be good for a few days and then we'd repeat the process. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

There is a lot that went on around me as I endured treatment after treatment. Most of which I don't remember because the chemo disrupted my brain. But, I do know that so many people jumped in to lend a hand. 

I will be grateful to those people forever. 

Cancer treatment is hard. It's exhausting and sickeness inducing but, if caught early enough, can also be life-saving. 

Early intervention is key. 

If you are reading this thinking, "I really need to schedule that mammogram." Stop what you are doing and make the appointment. 

There is no excuse that will justify jeopardizing your life.