Young women get breast cancer, too

WESTERN BUREAU:

A number of women go into depression or denial when diagnosed with breast cancer, especially the young ones with no family history of the dreaded disease. But not Shari Munroe.

Instead, the 36-year-old Montego Bay businesswoman went into the unknown. She hosted a 'Boob Voyage' birthday party with an intimate group of friends out at sea recently, as she bade farewell to her two breasts.

It is not that Munroe had no emotional connection with her body, having lost her eyelashes, eyebrows and head of hair as a result of chemotherapy, but she made the decision to enter her cancer journey differently.

“I was not sure if I would have broken down closer to the surgery, but I was bent on taking it all in stride. I chose the bright side of optimism,” the trained lawyer told The Sunday Gleaner.

Embracing the popular breast cancer colour, the 'Boob Voyage' event featured pink cupcakes (designed to look like nipples), rosé champagne, strawberry cake, pink hats and bathing suits, as Munroe's close-knit crew, now her support system, gave all assurance that she would not go on this voyage alone.

Munroe wanted to share her story, particularly about when she first got diagnosed with breast cancer, but went into denial and did not return to the doctor until six months later. By then her cancer had metastasise and spread to her lymph nodes.

Her doubts were bolstered by the fact that she is part of a relatively small number of young people who get the disease, and she had no family history. The genetic testing came back with no BRCA genes, she said.

Shocked by the diagnosis, Munroe said what started off as a very small lump was ignored by her for a long time.

She was 35 at the time, had breastfed her son of two years, was living a very active life and had just started a new business which took up a lot of her attention. Her business was her priority.

“Nobody at 35 thinks that they can get cancer, you don't even think that that could be an option. So I waited a while and then I finally went to the doctor who suggested I go and get an ultrasound, which is the first step in the process,” she revealed, adding that even with the ultrasound, that report was inconclusive, and they didn't think it rose to the level of doing a biopsy quite yet, so they told her to do it in two weeks, which turned into six months until October of 2020.

SOMETHING WAS WRONG

Deep within, Munroe said she had a feeling that something was going on in her body. By then the mass in her breast had grown twice as big, and that was when she decided to return to her doctor, general physician Patrice Thelwell-Munroe.

“My doctor told me to come back to her after getting the results, but me being young and arrogant, said, 'well, I read the results, I don't need to go back to the doctor now. I am good. I will go back in six months'.”

But months later she realised “I am good” meant something very serious was going on in her body. By the time Munroe did the biopsy, this time in the United States, her cancer had reached stage two.

“The cancer had metastasised to my lymph nodes on my right side. And so instead of going to surgery first and having to remove all of my lymph nodes, we decided to do chemotherapy first. So I did five months of chemo to try and shrink the lymph nodes and shrink the cancer in the breast to minimise how much they would have to take out during surgery,” said Munroe.

In the end, she decided to do a double mastectomy.

She did surgery two weeks ago in Florida.

Her decision to remove both breasts was by choice, because there was a slightly elevated risk of the cancer returning in the other breast.

“I just don't want to go through the rest of my life thinking that any little thing that happens in my breast would cause the anxiety of having to go and get it tested and wondering if the cancer has returned. So I decided I'm just gonna do a bilateral mastectomy to ease that worry for me,” she shared.

DON'T IGNORE YOUR HEALTH

More importantly, Munroe has gone on a pilgrimage of sorts, talking to other women, including her friends, primarily, about not ignoring their health.

According to her, “A lot of us have concerns that we just put on the back burner, we do everything else and we say we will deal with that later. So I have started to say listen, any type of pain you feel, any kind of, you know, you feel tired or fatigued, you know that something is wrong, go and check it out.”

Munroe said her signs were constant tiredness, which she said she thought had to do with her lifestyle. She wasn't sleeping well, and attributed what was happening to fatigue. At no time did she feel sick, she said.

“Throughout this whole process I haven't felt sick. Throughout chemotherapy, I was receiving steroids and everything else to try and lessen the symptoms of chemo, so I gained about 15 pounds,” she stated.

She has had one or maybe two days of nausea only. Otherwise, she is great.

Munroe did, however, noted that the chemotherapy changed her appearance, and that was something to come to grips with.

This is a woman who would do her eyebrows and fusion eyelashes, “and I was thinking, even if I lose my hair I wouldn't lose my lashes, but you don't realise there is nothing to fuse them on”.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com