• About
  • Cancer Coaching
  • Cart
  • Checkout
  • Contact Us
  • Health & Beauty
  • Home
  • My account
  • Resources
  • Shop

Cart

#OurTribe
  • Home
  • About
  • Cancer Coaching
    • New! Lymphedema Coaching
    • Nutritional Coaching
  • Health & Beauty
  • Lymphedema
  • #Our Stories
  • Events
  • Shop
    • Our Breast Cancer Product Picks
    • Swimwear
    • Compression Sleeves
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
#Our Stories  /  July 21, 2018

I Felt Like I Deserved My Breast Cancer

by Jenni Rai, PT, CLT

By Sascha Cohen

photo by Sascha CohenEveryone wants to know how I found the malignant tumors growing inside my breast when I was 31 years old. The how of it is this: One April morning I woke up to discover that my once rosy-colored areola had turned ghostly white, and the skin around it swollen and thick. My left breast felt like a hard, tight water balloon. It ached on the side near my armpit.

Although these things aren’t classic breast cancer symptoms, which I know because I Googled them instead of sleeping for a week, I went to the doctor anyway. Because of my family history—my mother had early stage ductal carcinoma in her 50s—my primary care physician wanted to rule it out. “Just to be on the safe side,” she said, smiling. It hurt when the ultrasound technician maneuvered a lubricated device against the tender skin across my nipple and under my arm. I desperately searched the screen for clues and saw a big, black oblong shadow amidst a sea of moving white streaks. Then another shadow. Then a third one. The technician wouldn’t look me in the eyes. An hour later, I sat in a small windowless room, gagging down a chalky tablet of Ativan as a radiologist spoke of “innumerable” areas of concern. They’d been there for a while; by the time my pathology results were in, the cancer was regionally advanced, bursting outside of the breast and into my lymphatic system, skin, and bloodstream.

That’s how.

I was more interested in the why, and so was my oncologist. “What’s a girl like you doing in an office like mine?” he asked when we first met. I was a fit non-smoker, a vegetarian who exercised regularly and rarely drank alcohol, suddenly facing the prospect that, depending on my tumor staging, I might not make it to age 40, or even to 35.

I thought about this as expensive poison slithered and burned through my fragile green veins. I thought about it when I writhed on the bathroom floor in a ruffled adult diaper, my lips cracking with sores, as the chemo did its worst to my digestive system. I thought about it after I woke up from my double mastectomy in searing pain, drifting in and out of awareness, my finger glued to the morphine pump as my severed nerves sharply spasmed across my chest. And I thought about it when I submitted my wounded body to the beams of a spaceship-sized radiation machine 28 days in a row, watching the left side turn pink and raw, then deep crimson, then brown, until layers of skin began to peel off in slimy, sticky sheets. What I had done to deserve cancer? If it wasn’t poor health habits, could it have been karma?

This month’s #Our Stories is an excerpt from Tribe member Sascha Cohen’s article originally published in Self. Click here to read entire article. 

Post navigation

Sleep Medication- Worth the Risk?
Vaginal Priming

Share your thoughts Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

NEW! Virtual Lymphedema Coaching

Book Appointment

Nutritional Coaching

Book Appointment

“#Ourtribe is more than breast cancer support, it is real time advice from those that have gone through the same thing you are about to. Sometimes the medical jargon is overwhelming, real life tips go a long way while battling breast cancer.” – Dana Donofree, founder of AnaOno, lingerie for breast cancer survivors

Let’s be Pen Pals!

Search

Follow me on Twitter

Tweets by @hashtagourtribe

Search

Recent Posts

  • All the Lube in the World Won’t Fix your Sex Life
  • Is it me, or is life more stressful lately?
  • Guided Beach Relaxation
  • New! Lymphedema Coaching
  • Is a 40-something Woman too old for Glossier?

Recent Comments

    Archives

    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • February 2020
    • November 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017

    Categories

    • #Our Stories
    • Ask The Expert!
    • Beauty
    • Cancer Coaching
    • Cover Stories
    • Events
    • Health
    • Health & Beauty
    • How-To
    • Lymphedema
    • Menopause
    • Mental Health
    • Nutrition
    • Self Care Sunday
    • Sex
    • Shop
    • Sleep
    • Uncategorized
    • We Tried This

    Search by Tags

    • AWS
    • axillary webbing syndrome
    • breast cancer
    • breast reconstruction
    • cancer coaching
    • chemotherapy
    • cleanse
    • compression sleeve
    • cording
    • dehydration
    • diet
    • electrolytes
    • fast
    • glossier
    • hot flash
    • hot flashes
    • implants
    • insomnia
    • lingerie
    • lubrication
    • lumpectomy
    • lymphedema
    • lymph nodes
    • makeup
    • manual lymph drainage
    • mastectomy
    • menopause
    • nutrition
    • pain
    • products
    • prolon
    • prosthetic breast
    • radiation skin care
    • Samantha Harris
    • self care
    • selfcare
    • shopping
    • skin
    • skin care
    • sleep
    • sleep hygiene
    • supplements
    • surgery
    • vaginal dryness
    • wellness

    Recent Comments

      Pages

      • About
      • Cancer Coaching
      • Cart
      • Checkout
      • Contact Us
      • Health & Beauty
      • Home
      • My account
      • Resources
      • Shop

      Categories

      • #Our Stories
      • Ask The Expert!
      • Beauty
      • Cancer Coaching
      • Cover Stories
      • Events
      • Health
      • Health & Beauty
      • How-To
      • Lymphedema
      • Menopause
      • Mental Health
      • Nutrition
      • Self Care Sunday
      • Sex
      • Shop
      • Sleep
      • Uncategorized
      • We Tried This

      Recent Posts

      • All the Lube in the World Won’t Fix your Sex Life
      • Is it me, or is life more stressful lately?
      • Guided Beach Relaxation
      • New! Lymphedema Coaching
      • Is a 40-something Woman too old for Glossier?

      Archives

      • July 2020
      • June 2020
      • May 2020
      • April 2020
      • February 2020
      • November 2019
      • April 2019
      • March 2019
      • January 2019
      • December 2018
      • November 2018
      • October 2018
      • August 2018
      • July 2018
      • June 2018
      • May 2018
      • April 2018
      • March 2018
      • February 2018
      • January 2018
      • December 2017
      • Elara by LyraThemes
      • (c) 2020 #OurTribe