I read this morning the story about former Dancing With The Stars co-host, Samantha Harris, who’s revealed she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and plans to undergo a double mastectomy later this month. In the new issue of People magazine, She says she felt a lump during a self-examination, but her mammogram shortly after came back clean. Trusting her gut, she says she knew something wasn’t right and ended up seeing a specialist for a needle biopsy and lumpectomy. Sadly, the result was she did have breast cancer. Although Samantha Harris says she could have opted for the less invasive lumpectomy with radiation, her decision to have the double mastectomy gave her the feeling control she felt she needed.

It’s been eight and a half years since I shared my own breast cancer journey on the Coast Morning Show. In these past eight plus years, I have had a number of women approach me to talk about their own cancer journey, and several have told me that sharing my story encouraged them to seek a second opinion regarding their mammograms. Sometimes we just know something isn’t right, call it intuition or a gut feeling, it’s okay–more than okay to seek out more, new, or better information.
It’s your body!

Every time I hear of another person joining our “club” it saddens me. While we have come so far in the treatment of breast- and other cancers- there’s absolutely no way to prepare yourself to hear the words… “You have cancer.”