Me and my twin sister, Kim, are breast cancer survivors. After we were diagnosed, we were allowed to open our adoption file and finally found out who our birth mother was. We learned that she and our grandmother both died of breast cancer. We both had the BRCA1 gene, and want others to know about the gene and get tested for it. My cancer was never found on a mammogram -- only an M[more]

Last night prior to bed I surfed some of my favorite blogs. One of them being PostSecret, which really had me upset. Not sure if you've ever visited PostSecret, but it is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.I've never sent one in because I hones…[more]

A cancer diagnosisIt was December 15, 1998 and I trotted down 8th Avenue in New York City and into the doctor’s office to get the lump in my left breast checked out. The lump had grown slightly over the past few months and it was a little sore. I had first felt the lump in college, and had it examined by several doctors. They looked at it, felt it, did…[more]

Now that you have your lovely little diagnosis of breast cancer or whatever kind it is, its time to fill your brain and your bookshelves with information. When I was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1981, there was very little information available (and no internet). I found one big fat book on living with cancer and dealing with the treatme…[more]

In 1992, at 57, I was diagnosed with a small Stage 1 infiltrating ductal carcinoma with one positive lymph node in the left breast. 22 out of 22 axilla nodes were negative. I had a lumpectomy, 30 sessions of radiation, and 6 chemotherapy sessions of CMF. Except for the nausea related to chemotherapy, I did relatively well during treatment. Prior to my treatmen…[more]