In the summer of 2020, I was going to the beach and putting my two-piece on—that’s when I saw pus on my breast, and I thought, “What the hell?” I still went to the beach, but when I came back, I noticed a hardened rash on my nipple and thought, “Oh, that’s weird.” It persisted and began to itch and bleed. My breast felt heavy.

This was during the pandemic, and it took three months to get my first doctor appointment. The doctor told me, “It’s probably the detergent you’re using, or something you’re eating.” She told me to use a hypoallergenic detergent . I did that, then came back a couple months later; the rash was still there. She gave me cortisone, a type of steroid, but that didn’t do anything, either.

Eventually I got a referral to a dermatologist. By then, I’d done my own research

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