Many New Year’s resolutions involve eating better, working out, and taking better care of your body. But when was the last time you checked yourself for signs of cancer? A local woman is encouraging everyone to check themselves and shares her wife’s story with breast cancer. Reporter Cassidy Taylor has the story…
“Jessica was sitting on the couch one day, and she felt like this twinge of pain, almost like a burning.”
Cancer comes in many forms, shapes, and sizes. Amber Hilber of Twentynine Palms, has been helping her wife, Jessica Allen, 33, battle stage 3 breast cancer since September, and she stresses not only the importance of checking yourself for signs of cancer, but also not letting your symptoms get written off by medical professionals.
“The doctors tried to dismiss her because of her age.”
Unusual lumps, significant changes to your body, and chronic pain can all be signs of cancer and are worth asking your doctor about. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has many resources available. Nearly 40% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes.
“Yeah, I think that women should go and get tested if they feel that something’s not right. And if their doctor isn’t taking them seriously to find someone who will, because you’re not too young to have breast cancer.”
“Where it started for us, Jessica was sitting on the couch one day, and she felt like this twinge of pain, almost like a burning in her breast. And so she felt around and felt a small lump. And maybe about two weeks later, we made an appointment at the doctor’s because we wanted to see if it went away, you know. And the doctor tried to dismiss her because of her age and tried to tell her, ‘Oh, no way it could be cancer, you’re too young.’
So, they ordered a ultrasound, and after they did the ultrasound, they realized that there’s no way that it wasn’t cancer, they tried to tell her it was a cyst first.
And right after they did the ultrasound, they ordered a mammogram and then, two days later, they had a biopsy done. And this was done at our local hospital and I was actually really impressed by them, at how they rushed through that process.
But at first, everybody was very dismissive and trying to tell her there’s no way it’s cancer. And that was something upsetting to me, because they shouldn’t tell you you don’t have cancer just because of your age. They were very quick out here, at telling her her diagnosis, somewhat, they just told her she had cancer, and then it took us about a month to get her into Loma Linda.
From there, they were able to tell us what type of breast cancer she had. I had no idea there were so many different kinds. She has the rarest type of breast cancer, which only affects young women. And so she’s been doing treatments for about two months now.
With the type of cancer normally they would do a surgery first to remove the cancer and then you do chemo, but for this type of cancer, it’s kind of like wildfire just spread through your body really fast. They have to put out the fire first with chemo and she’s got the most severe type of chemo there is and she’ll be doing chemo for six months and then she will have a double mastectomy. And then from there, she’ll do six months of radiation. With this cancer, they also say that it more than likely will come back somewhere else in the body.
She has her days. She just got really sick.
I just think that women should be more aware. Yeah, I think that women should go and get tested if they feel that something’s not right. And if their doctor isn’t taking them seriously, to find someone who will, because you’re not too young to have breast cancer.”
GOFUNDME LINK: https://gofund.me/875b0a57
CDC Cancer Resources: https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/index.htm
