I suffered a painful blow on my right breast when I was 20 years old. It left a small, painless lump, or scar, deep in my breast, and it always showed up in my later life with every mammogram. In my 50s, I was diagnosed to have breast cancer and had a radical mastectomy. This left me with having occasional bouts of cellulitis of the right arm. This inflammation seems to flare up when I am very active for a day or so and two or three times during each year.
My twin sister also was put on the oral cancer medication for five years when I had my breast surgery. She took a pill spasmodically.
Neither she nor I felt she was susceptible to that cancer. I always blame my cancer was due to the injury I had when I was 20, for it was in that lump and scaring tissue of the old injury. I probably didn’t deserve losing my entire breast and my arm’s lymph nodes, nor having the bouts of lymphedema that I suffer from the rest of my life — not to mention having had the radium and chemotherapy molestias I had to put up with.
Fortunately, we’re still living at 83, so guess one shouldn’t complain too much.
Ynette Sapp, Enid
