This is not my story. This is my grand-mother story, 35 years ago. She never told us that she was having health problems... not to her children, grand-children not even to her husband...
It was a secret, it was a shame for her. She was a strong woman, 65 years old and never was sick before. She was raised on a farm, helped her mother to raise her 17 sisters and brothers, worked physically hard for years. And then we was sick.... a breast cancer.
She never told anyone, left one morning and went to the hospital, had a mastectomy and called her husband at the end of his working day to tell him that she was at the hospital.
She was ashamed, was never really comfortable with her own body, being a women from the mid-Century... But wait Ladies, even with the lack of knowledge about breast cancer at this time, she survived for more than 30 years. She died at 92 years old.
So keep you chin up and your hopes high it is possible to make it!!
Forest Hills, NY