Our resident Girlfriends share their stories with breast cancer
The mother/daughter relationship is the closest, most unique and influential relationships there are. There’s something about the deep, emotional connection that a mother and daughter share that is utterly awesome!

Growing up, my Mama was my strongest influence. I only wished that I could grow up and be as pretty, as stylish, and as smart as she. I realize now that I took for granted that she’d always be with me. She’d always been there and I knew that if I didn’t have a penny to my name, I had my mama and she’d be there for me and I’d be alright.

Mama was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998, three years after her very own mother. My grandmother’s breast cancer was taken care of with surgery and radiation. Unfortunately, my mother’s bout with cancer wasn’t that easy. She battled breast cancer for six years, having a partial and then a full mastectomy. I watched her fight, and go through treatment that made her weak and tired. I watched her lose her black, wavy hair and long eyelashes. Finally, treatment was done, and her pretty, wavy hair grew back – even prettier than before, and those eyelashes returned. I had my Mama back and everything was okay, or so we thought.

It was the beginning of June 2003 when I got the call that Mama’s breast cancer had returned, and she was terminal. My heart dropped and there was an awful pain in my stomach! I had just been told that she was dying and I didn’t know how to handle that.

We had come to accept that she was not going to be around forever. She had begun preparing my sisters for what was to come. They needed to understand they would not have their mommy forever. She wouldn’t be around to help them through puberty and talk to them about boys, she wouldn’t be able to teach them how to do their make-up, she wouldn’t be around to help them pick out their prom dresses or be there for their graduations. They needed to know this and understand it. It plagued her daily wondering what would happen to us when she was gone. I promised her that I would raise her little girls the way she would’ve. We began making plans to make good use of the time we had left together, and Mama began planning her funeral. Funny, but she was excited about her funeral and planning it.

She went into the hospital at the beginning of April, and seemed to be in good spirits, but I knew she was just fighting for us. Mama came home at the end of April on a Tuesday and complained about not feeling well. Saturday night she prayed to God and thanked him for my grandmother and my sisters and I, and she passed away that next day. My dad and my sisters and I were with her and held her hand and talked and sang to her until her heart beat for the last time.

At 23-years-old, I never thought I’d be sitting in a hospital having a conversation about mammograms and genetic testing for breast cancer, but I was. I never thought I’d be writing my mother’s obituary at 23, but I was. I never thought I’d be in the basement of a funeral home applying what would be the last time my mother would have make-up applied, but I was. I am now 26, and carrying out the promise that I made to Mama. My sisters and I are doing just fine. My little divas know that even though Mama isn’t physically with us, she’s in our hearts. We miss her and it can get hard sometimes, but we’re moving on.
-NaMia Moore

As we watch the sun set over the lake, I feel closer to this powerful, strong woman than I have ever felt. If it weren’t for her dedication to getting better, this one-on-one chat would not be possible. She tells me her story, but it’s different this time. I’m picking away at her soul. It’s hard to believe it was two years ago when she was told that she had breast cancer. It was June 2005 when she received the call at work with the news that would change her life.

The first thing that she thought about was her son, the thought of him growing up with-out a mother was too much to handle. There were so many emotions that flowed through her head as she sat at her desk; disbelief, shock and sadness, but she had to pull it together for her family. As she sat in her basement with her 13- year- old son, she had to explain her fate. As any child would do, he cried in shock of his mother diagnosis. When she went for her first chemotherapy session, she was numb and didn’t shed a tear. She stood strong, but behind that shield was fear. She said it felt like poison running through her body. Luckily she didn’t feel sick, but it only took one session of that poison to make her once flowing hair fall out. Her stomach sank, but she knew what she had to do. The next day she shaved her head. As much as she was sad over the thought of being bald, she says it was liberating when she put those clippers to her scalp.

Two years later she’s cancer free, but she has daily reminders of the enemy that invaded her body. She has had two surgeries since chemo, and was hospitalized with a staph infection a year after finishing her last
chemotherapy treatment. For the rest of her life she will have to wear a compression sleeve on her left arm. This is a small price to pay for her life. When I asked her if this has changed her for the better, she said, “of course”, she is more positive and definitely stronger. Now she is living every second to the fullest.

As we finished our heart-to-heart and the sun completely disappeared, she tells me “Everybody thinks I’ll be fine but I know I will get it back.” Are those words of a positive person, no, but those are the words of a person who doesn’t know what next year will bring. This woman is my aunt, my best friend and my inspiration. I have spent my life looking up to this woman and I always will.

-Erin Bowers

For as long as I can remember, my family has always been secretive when it comes to our health. I’m not sure why it’s that way but it seems the norm in quite a few African American families. I was grown and married with children before I knew and fully understood most of my family health history.

Not unlike many other ethnic clans, we have a history of high blood pressure, heart disease and breast cancer. I must admit, the latter has had the most
significant impact on my life – my mother is a breast cancer survivor.

In March of 2001, right after my 33rd Birthday, I recall my grandmother telling me that my mother would be having surgery in a few days. When I inquired what the operation was for, she simply informed me that my mother was having a lump removed from her one of her breasts. I was devastated and had a million questions: How sick was she? How long had she know about the lump? Would she die? Had anyone else in our family ever had breast cancer?

Over the next year my mother had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation treatment and lymph node removal to aggressively treat her breast cancer all while working full time. She is in her 5th year of being a cancer survivor and credits her survival and recovery to prayer and her faith in God.

Since my mother’s diagnosis and recovery I have become an advocate for Breast Cancer Awareness. I read everything and act as an advocate whenever and wherever I can. I still don’t know if anyone else in my family has ever had breast cancer – that’s a slow process that I’m still working on. I don’t believe their secretiveness is an intentional effort to hide information, just a racial and generational mores. I will do my part to break the chain of silence for my children and their future health.
-Ptosha Davis Leflore