Elizabeth Raabe

My late mother was diagnosed on my 18th birthday on March 16, 1984 (breast cancer Stage 4) and told me to not go and be with my high school friends for my birthday, when she said to me the "C" word with her best friend late Sally Hahne by her side on the couch in our living room that day. I was so new to what cancer was back then and was even scared to see my mother in the hospital after the surgery was over. But she had a very good breast cancer surgeon back then, the late Dr Pablo Franco at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax Virginia. He told her that she "would not be a statistic". And she wasn't one. She lived cancer free after that for 28 1/2 years old in May of 2012 she acquired Esophageal Cancer Stage 4. She died on September 4, 2012 from esophageal (throat) cancer. M y late mother was an advocate for breast cancer after she got it, and I have been as well and still am. I have been getting mammograms ever since I was 29 (because my late mom's late mom - my late maternal grandmother - also had it back in 1977 and survived it until she had liver cancer in 2005 and died from that in May 2005). Because of that history with my mom and grandmother, I went and got mammograms ever since. I had 2 false positives, one in 2010 and then one earlier this year...that by prayers and so on, both were negative...no cancer whatsoever. It is because of the thick dense tissue in my breasts. Now for the past 2 years straight I have been getting the 3D imaging scans for mammograms and those are more accurate by far. I just want to say thank you for standing up for other women who have this or who have died from it. Cancer, and breast cancer in particular, is something you don't sneeze at by any stretch.