Luna and Servpro supports Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

How could you not support a great cause! 

-Denea Duran

I am running for Lindsay

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and this is worth watching for six minutes! Tell us what you think! 

http://forlindsay.com/

-Denea Duran

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Breast awareness and self-exam

Beginning in their 20s, women should be told about the benefits and limitations of breast self-exam (BSE). Women should be aware of how their breasts normally look and feel and report any new breast changes to a health professional as soon as they are found. Finding a breast change does not necessarily mean there is a cancer.

A woman can notice changes by knowing how her breasts normally look and feel and feeling her breasts for changes (breast awareness), or by choosing to use a step-by-step approach and using a specific schedule to examine her breasts.

Women with breast implants can do BSE. It may be useful to have the surgeon help identify the edges of the implant so that you know what you are feeling. There is some thought that the implants push out the breast tissue and may make it easier to examine. If you choose to do BSE, the following information provides a step-by-step approach for the exam. The best time for a woman to examine her breasts is when the breasts are not tender or swollen. Women who examine their breasts should have their technique reviewed during their periodic health exams by their health care professional.

It is acceptable for women to choose not to do BSE or to do BSE occasionally. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding can also choose to examine their breasts regularly.

Women who choose not to do BSE should still know how their breasts normally look and feel and report any changes to their doctor right away.

How to examine your breasts

Lie down on your back and place your right arm behind your head. The exam is done while lying down, not standing up. This is because when lying down the breast tissue spreads evenly over the chest wall and is as thin as possible, making it much easier to feel all the breast tissue.

Use the finger pads of the 3 middle fingers on your left hand to feel for lumps in the right breast. Use overlapping dime-sized circular motions of the finger pads to feel the breast tissue.

Use 3 different levels of pressure to feel all the breast tissue. Light pressure is needed to feel the tissue closest to the skin; medium pressure to feel a little deeper; and firm pressure to feel the tissue closest to the chest and ribs. It is normal to feel a firm ridge in the lower curve of each breast, but you should tell your doctor if you feel anything else out of the ordinary. If you're not sure how hard to press, talk with your doctor or nurse. Use each pressure level to feel the breast tissue before moving on to the next spot.

Move around the breast in an up and down pattern starting at an imaginary line drawn straight down your side from the underarm and moving across the breast to the middle of the chest bone (sternum or breastbone). Be sure to check the entire breast area going down until you feel only ribs and up to the neck or collar bone (clavicle).

There is some evidence to suggest that the up-and-down pattern (sometimes called the vertical pattern) is the most effective pattern for covering the entire breast without missing any breast tissue.

Repeat the exam on your left breast, putting your left arm behind your head and using the finger pads of your right hand to do the exam.

While standing in front of a mirror with your hands pressing firmly down on your hips, look at your breasts for any changes of size, shape, contour, or dimpling, or redness or scaliness of the nipple or breast skin. (The pressing down on the hips position contracts the chest wall muscles and enhances any breast changes.)

Examine each underarm while sitting up or standing and with your arm only slightly raised so you can easily feel in this area. Raising your arm straight up tightens the tissue in this area and makes it harder to examine.

This procedure for doing breast self-exam is different from previous recommendations. These changes represent an extensive review of the medical literature and input from an expert advisory group. There is evidence that this position (lying down), the area felt, pattern of coverage of the breast, and use of different amounts of pressure increase a woman's ability to find abnormal areas

Content Credit: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/BreastCancerEarlyDetection/breast-cancer-early-detection-acs-recs-bse

-Denea Duran 

An Interview with Kim Watson

The day I had a coffee interview with Kim Watson I pulled a copy of Lexington Life magazine out of my mailbox to find her face, accompanied by the other four women who make up “The Ta-Tinis,” smack dab on the cover. This group of five came together with the common thread of being diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age—ranging from 26 to 34-years-old at the time of diagnosis.

When I walked into the coffee shop that day I expected someone entirely different than Kim. I had seen Kim before; I knew what she looked like, but to sit across the table from her discussing everything about her experience from the initial phone call to the last chemotherapy treatment—it was hard to believe that a woman with so much radiance had been on Kim’s journey.

She recalled the initial phone call from her doctor. “He asked me if I was by myself... ‘I have cancer, don’t I?’” The treatment was grueling, with reactions varying from nausea to an endless appetite, from extreme exhaustion to an inability to sleep. Refusing defeat, though, Kim insisted on continuing work during treatment.



“Did treatment have an effect on the way you felt about yourself as a woman?” I asked. There comes a time, Kim explained, when you have no breasts, no hair, you’ve gained weight, and you have no energy to exercise or do anything, really. You feel nothing like your former self—you don’t feel like a woman. You try not to take more than one day at a time, but you wonder who will ever want this. After a long journey of treatment, reconstructive surgery, and time, an old you returns—a long lost friend, stronger than before. “One day I looked in the mirror and I didn’t see cancer anymore.”

The Ta-Tinis were formed originally for the support of each other, but realizing the utter lack of support for young women, their support gradually became directed more outwardly to other young women facing the same battle. “It’s an amazing opportunity to take something bad, cancer, and use it to help other women.”

Kim, adorned with a smile, made a comment that revealed precisely what set her apart from other women in a simple yet profound comment: “Most women complain about turning thirty,” she says, “but when you have cancer you celebrate every year.”

For more information about The Ta-Tinis, please visit their website.

Sandy Hayden