“In 2012, I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment, but I pushed it off. I thought I was fine. I was only 38. During the summer, I had noticed some changes in my breast, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. But then, I was getting dressed, and one of my kids said, why does your nipple look like that? My nipple was totally inverted. It was literally pushed in. That can happen to breastfeeding moms, so I didn’t think too much about it. I left it, but it made me think about it all summer long. My appointment was supposed to happen in November, but I pushed it off again until January. Life was busy with kids and work. I eventually had my appointment, and at the end, I asked her if she could also do a breast exam. I showed her, and she said, we need to do a mammogram. On January 8th, I had my mammogram. They did a bunch of tests, followed by an ultrasound, and then they sat me down and said, we think you have breast cancer. When my nipple wouldn’t come back out, they said that was the cancer pulling it in. I immediately saw the surgeon. It was pretty large. It was stage 3B. There was no family history, so it didn’t make any sense. On January 22, I ended up having a total mastectomy. It all happened so fast. Recovery went well. I started chemo February 20th, which was every 3 weeks for a year. I couldn’t take the chemo pills, because the kind of breast cancer I had was different. It was called HER2, which means the breast cells grow aggressively and divides in an erratic way. It’s more likely to spread and come back compared to other breast cancers. Along with chemo, I did radiation that summer, every Monday through Friday for 5 weeks. That was tough, but I just tried to work through it. Now, I have checkups every 6 months, and it hasn’t come back. I try to take care of myself as best as I can, and I’ve been able to maintain my health. I workout a lot more now. I used to be exhausted all the time, but now that I workout so much, I feel like I can keep going. I know I’m a lot healthier when I workout. I didn’t know that an inverted nipple was one of the top 5 symptoms of breast cancer. I learned that in nursing school, but I didn’t think of it, because I had never known anybody that found out that way. Even now, I’m still the only one that I know that this has ever happened to. I have friends that teach nursing school, and they all teach their students to look for this now.”