There is no rhyme or reason why any of us get cancer.  You can do all the right things and still wham. It is nothing you did or didn't do, it just is.  If we knew why any of us get cancer, there would be a cure

I try to remember when I am thinking "why me" the question is really "why not me"    None of us are immune.We all just do the best we can each day

Be well

Nel

cancer knows no boundaries. It doesn't discriminate. I was 37 at diagnosis. Your story seems like my story. I eat well, exercise like a fanatic, no smoking, occasional red wine. But, here we are. No looking back now. Now it's time to kick a$$ and rejoice in the future that we'll have.

Recurrances are also a crap shoot. There's no rhyme or reason to who will and who won't recur. The best you can do is stay vigilant... do your BSE monthly, listen to your docs and continue with a healthy lifestyle.

IMO my oncologist said it best when I asked her why. She gently replied "you have breasts, they sometimes get cancer, this is not your doing"

I was only 29 when diagnosed, hehe, I did 16 rounds of chemo, mastectomy, 33 rounds of radiation, 6 rounds of oral chemo.... I will have diep reconstruction next week! You can do it!

One thing is now fairly certain, cancer is due to a lack of appropriate response from the immune system. One if my main suspects is the fact that I was treated for every little infection as a youngster...if not given antibiotics at least got the Tylenol and alike. Fever was a no-no, and killed the moment it raised above normal. But now we start to understand the relationship between fever and a highly efficient immune system. Throughout the time humans had to fight infections without any help. So what if our immune system have evolved to need infections to fine tune?

I was 37 and pregnant with an 8cm tumor

same here, 38 years old and no family history... Recently I’ve kind of stopped asking myself the question “why me” I accepted itas it is and trying to move on, still have some difficult moments but a lot better compring first month.....

MTNCLMBR had the same thoughts myself. I had three kids before the age of 30, breast fed all three for nearly a year each. Don't smoke, rarely drink, eat a plant-based diet with occasional organic poultry, exercise religiously and am under ideal weight. I'm 48 and I feel so guilty that now my daughters have a family history of breast cancer hanging over their heads.

I was recently diagnosed with invasive breast cancer stage 1 1.9 CM. I had a double mastectomy in March. I'm triple negative so I cannot take hormone therapy. I'm struggling with the decision to start chemo. I have seen two onocologost. It is the whole “unknown." That I'm having a hard time coming to terms with. My oncologist told me I could do nothing and it could come back or I could do chemo and it could reoccur. He also told me my odds of survival in 10 years are 78% without chemo and 82% with. That's only a 4% differenence! Any thoughts

No one really seems to know why some women will get a reproductive cancer at a young age. My sister never took bc pills, gave birth to a baby at age 34 and was diagnosed with uterine leiomyosarcoma at age 37 in 1999. She lived over a 1,000 miles from me in another state and I had a young child myself at that time so I could not offer as much support as I would have liked to have. For this I feel guilty. Fortunately her husband was retired and he spent an enormous amount of time and resources flying her to various specialists in NYC and in Boston. (he was 13 years her senior and was financially secure). Her type of cancer has a very poor prognosis unless found extremely early. She traveled to the best sarcoma cancer centers on the east coast eventually but due to a misdiagnosis by her original ob/gyn it was found far far too late. (The ob/gyn had diagnosed her with fibroids, but the mass in her uterus grew at an extremely fast rate, her ob/gyn did not send her for any imaging tests when she diagnosed the large 'fibroid' which was pushing the cervix out of the line of vision of the speculum at her annual checkup and about 8 months later her uterus was very enlarged, think of a woman with a 5 month pregnancy). My sister did not even tell me what was going on at the time, I think she was in denial. I think she also said it was in one of her breasts as a metastases, but I am not really sure. She was too traumatized during her treatments to really speak much about it. The internet was not like it is now back then. I have asked my doctors over the years whether this is an hereditary cancer and have never really gotten an answer. I'm not sure they know the answer. It's a very unpredictable disease in some cases. In other cases they know what causes it, such as cervical cancer is usually caused by HPV most of the time. There may be some virus involved, I don't know the answer. Maybe someday they will have more answers. Anyway with the most state of the art treatment my sister passed away 3 years after her diagnosis unfortunately but that type of cancer is nearly always fatal. I have been wondering ever since whether I'm carrying a gene for it or something. My regular ob/gyn did not know the answer. I am seeing a breast specialist next week I am sure they are going to want to know my entire family history. I did have one first cousin who had bc in her 20's, she is still alive and well and now over age 60. (we are not in contact, she is a private person). Another first cousin (paternal side) passed away from colon cancer about four years ago, she was in her late 40's. My mother has never had bc and both paternal and maternal grandmothers died from alzheimers and a heart condition in their very late 80s. I doubt either grandmother ever had a mammogram, they were both born in the late 1800's. My mother has no sisters and my father's two sisters (my paternal aunts) never had bc as far as I know. Only one is still alive, she is about 85 years old. The other one died in her 80s of kidney cancer I believe. I haven't heard whether either of my paternal aunts ever had any bc issues. If the one who is alive has I was never told. My father died of a sudden heart attack 36 years ago in his early 50's. After that we had little contact with his family except now we are in contact through FB.

It's scary as heck, most of the time I try not to think about these things as these thoughts will just consume your every waking moment.

I feel like you why did I get it at a young age though I’m 10 years older than you but I assume ladies 10 or 20 years older than us feel the same way. Nobody escapes the risks unfortunately. Totally unfair at any ag