This 28-Year-Old Has Been Diagnosed with Breast Cancer 4 Times Since She Was 22

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Jessica Florence was only 22 years old when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. She remembers feeling a lump in her right breast when she was in college, but she assumed she was too young for cancer, so she didn’t let it worry her much at first.

However, she was smart enough to have the lump checked by a doctor. She had to see three different physicians before they finally figured out what the lump was.

Photo: YouTube/First Coast News

“They all told me, ‘You’re too young to have breast cancer,'” Jessica says.

It came as a total shock to Jessica when she was diagnosed with breast cancer after being told so many times that she was too young for cancer. Life as she knew it suddenly came to a grinding halt.

“I just felt like my life was going to crash and burn,” she recalls.

Photo: YouTube/First Coast News

Now, some six years later, breast cancer is nothing new for 28-year-old Jessica; she’s been diagnosed with the disease four separate times and even gone from “cured” all the way to stage IV metastatic cancer.

“It went from my brain to my spine. And now, back to my brain,” she says.

However, Jessica hasn’t let this grand opportunity pass her by either. She began sharing her story on social media to raise awareness and show people what it’s like being a Black woman with breast cancer.

Photo: YouTube/First Coast News

“I had a hard time finding what breast cancer looked like for Black women. And so, I took it [upon] myself and took my journey,” she says. “And I was very vulnerable. I showed all of my surgeries, all of my scars. I shared everything.”

According to the American Cancer Society, breast cancer is the leading cause of death among Black women. Jessica and others like her are hoping their stories can help convince other Black women to take their health seriously and get checked out if anything doesn’t feel right.

Photo: YouTube/First Coast News

“African American women under the age of 35 are actually two times more likely to develop breast cancer than their Caucasian counterparts,” says Dr. Sabrina Sahni, an oncologist at Mayo Clinic in Florida. “Unfortunately, they’re also more likely to have more aggressive disease, and at three times the higher rate of mortality. So, it really is a huge discrepancy in our care.”

So regardless of your age or ethnicity, it’s important to do regular self-checks once a month and to get breast cancer screening in accordance with current recommendations. And Jessica hopes you’ll do one more thing too:

“Stay positive. Stay vibrant.”

Check out the video below to learn more about her amazing story.

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Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Healthly Days.
Publisher: The Breast Cancer Site

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