Tick, tick, tick. That's the sound I heard in my head for years, every time I looked at myself braless in the mirror or worked up enough courage to give myself a breast self-exam in the shower. It was the tick of what felt like a timebomb sitting on my chest, waiting to explode. Breast cancer. It had been on my mind almost every day of my life from the time I was a teenager, when I began to fully understand the battle my own mother fought and the possibility that I too may have to fight my own war against the same disease. A disease that has truly plagued my family. On April 1, 2024, I walked into an operating room . I elected to have a preventative double mastectomy, removing my breasts in hopes of eliminating the possibility of a breast cancer diagnosis in the future. Inevitably, when I

See Full Page