A breast cancer diagnosis is a terrifying experience, and a woman who
hears that she has breast cancer needs all the help she can get. This is
especially true for black women, who are more likely than all other races
and ethnicities to develop a fast-growing type of breast cancer when they
are in their childbearing years. I am a black woman and also a three-time
cancer survivor who has learned valuable lessons that I will share with
you in this book. I am also adept at academic research, and have scoured
research databases for studies that would be particularly useful to you in
your own quest to overcome breast cancer. My goal is to provide you with
the information that you need to deal with your breast cancer, as well as
to cope with all the emotions that surround it.
I have survived two bouts with breast cancer and have also survived
thyroid cancer that was probably caused by my radiation treatments for
breast cancer. I am also living proof that when cancer is identifi ed, death
does not have to be immediate or inevitable. Of course, death itself is ulti-
mately inevitable for us all, but this does not mean that a cancer diagnosis
leads in a direct path to dying young. Sadly, however, far too many young
and middle-aged black women die from breast cancer, and that is why
I wrote this book. They die unnecessarily because their cancer is not
diagnosed in time or because they refuse to seek treatment that is readily
available in the form of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and other
options. They die because of lack of access to health care or lack of knowl-
edge of available resources that many minorities are not aware are avail-
able to assist them in their diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They die
because they did not know that they had a family history of breast cancer,
because no one wanted to talk about that mother, grandmother, aunt,
uncle, brother, sister, and cousin who died of cancer—or maybe nobody
in the family knew that family members died from breast cancer because
Introduction
