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Editor's Note

'Why me?' One young woman's breast cancer journey. By Lynn ArmitagePublished: October, 2008

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Did you know that breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. among YOUNG women – ages 20-39? According to the Orange County Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, breast cancer patients under age 40 are more at risk of dying from breast cancer than older women. With the majority of our readers in that vulnerable age group, we feel a special obligation during Breast Cancer Awareness Month to remind busy moms to do regular self-breast exams. It could save your life, as it did for Lisa: When Lisa Dittmer was 37, she found a lump in one of her breasts during a routine self-breast exam. Because she was so young, she didn’t think it was serious. Maybe a cyst from too much caffeine, she reasoned.     The hard-charging sales executive was stunned when she got the diagnosis: infiltrating ductal carcinoma – the most common type of breast cancer. “You mean I have cancer?” she asked the doctor.  “That’s something that happens to your grandmother,” she said, although she had no family history of breast cancer.            Fortunately, Lisa caught it early, so the prognosis was good. Even so, she had to make a life-changing decision:  Have a full mastectomy or remove only the cancerous lymph nodes?     The decision was not easy for this single woman, who was busy dating and dreamed of breastfeeding her children someday. “The quality-of-life issues are just as important as the treatment,” she says.     Lisa opted to keep her breasts and had a lumpectomy, coupled with chemotherapy and radiation. While going through treatment, her company closed down and she lost her job. She discovered strength she never knew she had. “Sometimes I think, ‘How could I have done that?’ But you do.” She credits her faith and prayer for getting her through. “If you don’t have hope, you don’t have anything.”     After her surgery, Lisa was compelled to share her story with other young women. She joined the Komen Speakers’ Bureau and spoke at high schools, colleges and sororities. “It was a good feeling to educate young girls, because no one ever told me anything.”     A few years later, Lisa married Ken, the man who stood by her during her cancer ordeal, and they wanted to start a family. The doctors told her she had only a 3 percent chance of getting pregnant, because her hormone levels indi-cated she was already in menopause. Lisa was devastated, so they decided to adopt. Weeks before the adoption went through, Lisa became pregnant with Jacob, the child she had always longed for. She calls it a miracle.        “The cancer taught me to really encompass joy and appreciate the good things that I have now.” There must be something to all that positive thinking. Now, at 46, the breast-cancer survivor, for whom motherhood was once improbable, is expecting her second child, another boy, in January.     Her advice to other moms newly diagnosed with breast cancer: “Be kind to yourself. Just take a deep breath and know that you can do anything when you put your mind to it.” Lynn Armitage is the editor of OC Family magazine.

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