Description

This video by TV360 shows you how 31 year old Kim copes with breast cancer.

Transcript

1% of breast cancer happens to young women. I believe that from that statistic, it couldn’t happen to me, that it would never happen to me. I was diagnosed as a stage 3 breast cancer patient with a tumor that was 6.7 centimeters with 20 positive lymph nodes and to be told that my cancer is hereditary. After my diagnosis, the doctors tested me genetically for the breast cancer gene. A lot of young women tested positive for this gene that are also diagnosed with breast cancer. I think as a young woman, you go through a lot of different stages. And I think that at first, you feel like you’re going to die tomorrow and you feel like your youth has been taken away, the things that people take for granted such as having children, getting married—you know, when you have a cancer diagnosis, you start to rethink a lot of your tomorrows. And I think that with time, the more time that goes by and after going through chemo and radiation, you slowly begin to think that yes I can get my life back and I can get back to where I was before although I will never be the same person. After the diagnosis, I had a mastectomy with a full reconstruction at the time because as a young woman, I didn’t want to go through my life feeling like—I had already felt the void of having the breast cancer but I didn’t want anybody to know that I was missing a breast. After the mastectomy, I started chemotherapy which was 12 weeks long. I would get an infusion once every three weeks and all at the same time while I’m trying to be in my 30’s and live a normal life and continue at work as a teacher, that was really hard for me. I was in a relationship at the time and that relationship fell apart while I went through chemo and I was losing my hair, just a lot of outside factors and I think the stress of not knowing the certainty of my tomorrow. It was hard on the person. And so, I didn’t date through chemo or through radiation. And so just until about a month after radiation, I started dating again and that’s difficult. It’s good in the fact that I get to get my mind off of the scariness of the disease but it’s hard in the fact that you have to be willing to open up and to be ready to be vulnerable and see if that person is really going to be with you for the right reasons once you tell them what you’ve gone through. I lost my hair five days after my first treatment. And then now, it’s starting to grow back finally. When I look forward, if I go based off of a statistic, my statistic does not look so positive. But I think that in the end, I’m positive about it. I’m positive because I feel good right now. My body feels healthy right now. I can think clearly. Nothing is in pain and that’s what keeps me going.