YouTuber Tess Christine recently released a video sharing her breast cancer diagnosis. After going dark on social media for over a month, the very active 30-year-old new mother finally returned to her platform to tell her 2.33+ million subscribers that she had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. In her video, she says that she decided to get a double mastectomy and is in the process of getting breast reconstruction. As a healthy young mother, the last thing Tess expected was a diagnosis of breast cancer.
Prior to joining the Foundation, breast cancer education and the research that accompanies it was not something on my radar. I had heard stories of younger individuals being diagnosed with breast cancer, but I naively thought that because it wasn’t something that ran in my family, it wasn’t something I should be educating myself about at age 24. Little did I know that in the U.S., 1 in 196 women are diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 40. I also didn’t know that only about 5% to 10% of breast cancers are thought to be hereditary — which means more than 90% of people diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history!
Educating myself through my work has been highly rewarding. I feel much more confident in my knowledge of breast cancer and have been able to help direct friends and family to resources available on drsusanloveresearch.org to learn more.
No one expects to wake up one day and find a lump in their breast at 30-years-old, like Tess. But if that day comes, it is important to have a basic knowledge of breast cancer and to understand where to find resources and a community that will help you in your journey.
