How Planned Parenthood Services caught my Cancer

This post, How Planned Parenthood Services caught my Cancer, is made possible with support from the Mission List. All opinions are my own.

My grandmother, Helen, was an instrumental person in my life. She was blessed with both beauty outside and in. She helped found a Christian Camp, that services hundreds of young adults still to this day. She worked to build what is now the Seneca, five Nations in Allegheny, NY. As a small child she taught me so much but it wasn’t until her battle with breast cancer I would learn hard life lessons. Beauty and strength comes from within. She fought daily as she lost parts of her women hood. I remember riding to her treatments listening to “He has the whole world in his hands” thinking she is so brave. My grandmother lost her life to cancer but through it changed mine forever. I hope to be a fraction of what she was to me to someone else. My first step was getting a breast exam and pap smear when I became of age. Planned Parenthood has many of these great services you can utilize. Cancer has run in my family and let me tell you getting tested can be vital. I am not a doctor nor do I have medical training but from what I have experienced early detection is key.

What if early detection like breast exams and pap smears didn’t exist? At the age of 18 after a routine pap smear and breast cancer I found out I had Cancer. I was the youngest in my family and immediately rushed to exploratory surgery. After hours under the knife one of my ovaries and a tumor was removed. A few hours later I was back in the operating room for internal bleeding where they removed part of my fallopian tube. At the time I was unsure if I would ever bare child of my own.  If these services did not exist, I would never have made it t the age of 24. I certainly would not have been able to bare a child. If it had not been caught early on by exams and my doctors.

You can read all about my infertility, IVF struggles and son’s birth story here. Although, I do not usually share to much on politics, I felt my story was important to share. I can certainly only speak from my personal experiences. I truly believe if I had not gotten tested I would not be here. That is just the facts. It has taken 7 surgeries, 3 rounds of Cancer treatments and numerous doctor appointments and exams to get me where I am today.

Have you gotten your Early detection exams for Cancer? What are you waiting for? Read some great resources Planned Parenthood has to offer and what they support here.