alopecia
"I’ve had alopecia since I was a child. My grandmother always told me that my hair was my beauty and although that sounds nice and is somewhat true it haunted me and drove my self esteem down to all time low."
Imagine growing up as a little girl thinking that you weren’t beautiful because you had alopecia. My Mom and I visited numerous doctors, specialists you name it which ultimately were unable to find a successful treatment. I learned to live with alopecia by masking it with tracks, braids and specific hair styles. During my first year of undergraduate school, I went completely bald! This was so devastating for me but I decided not to be sad and turn it into good, so I became a magician (or at least I would like to think so) with wigs. I taught myself how to make my own. There was always someone (family, stranger or friend) that would have something negative to say about my hairstyle like, “that hairstyle makes you look old “or “why don’t you ever wear your real hair”. Not knowing that while they were saying those things they were crushing every incy wincy tiny bit of self-esteem that I had left. I just, you know, pushed on and the things that they said made me work even harder to make my wigs more realistic. Then my eyebrows started to fall out. When it happened that was hard to deal with. Like with my hair, there was always someone that had something to say! I had someone ask me “why did you try to shave your eyebrows off and then draw them back on” or “why would you do that, why won’t you just wear your regular eyebrows” again having no idea that what they were saying was making me feel even smaller and worse than I already did about the fact that I was losing my hair and I didn’t know what to do about it. My eyebrows eventually grew back so I didn’t have to worry about that for too long.
endometriosis
"My entire menstruating life I suffered from severe menstrual cycles with severe menstrual cramps and nausea. I never knew why, I was always just given medication to help deal with the symptoms."
I was told that I had cysts in my ovaries at a very young age and that that was a part of why my symptoms were so intense but for the most part i told myself “I’ll chalk it up to genetics because my mom also had a bad menstrual cycle. When I got older and got married and was trying to have kids I had difficulty and so I randomly decided to search for a new OB/GYN. I found new doctor and within a five minute consultation with her she was able to tell me that I had endometriosis which was something that I maybe heard of once or twice but I didn’t completely understand. From the consultation she was able to refer me to a specialist. I was able to meet with the specialist and I had a surgery and the surgeon confirmed that I did have endometriosis and I was actually at stage I think three or four. The surgery performed was laparoscopic removal of endometriosis.
Within less than a month of being cleared from surgery I became pregnant but I had no idea. Come to find out I was actually pregnant with my twin boys! From there I learned more about endometriosis and the things that I needed to do to prevent it from coming back because there’s always a possibility even after surgery. So here I am living with my alopecia and endometriosis but the blessing after all of this was my twin boys!
breast cancer
"I breastfed my boys for one year straight exclusively and I was so proud of myself because I had accomplished that feat."
Well a year or so later I started noticing some nipple discharge and at first I didn’t pay it any mind but my breast was swollen for a little bit and at that point I remembered that one of my sons got in the bed with me the night before and he sleeps very wild. I was sure that my breast was swollen because he kicked me so I didn’t pay it any attention. After speaking with my mom she encouraged me to go to the doctor because it wasn’t getting better on its own. At this point the doctor said well I’m not going to see you just yet I want you to get an ultrasound first. I went to get the ultrasound, got the results back and everything was normal. I was excited however in the back of my mind I thought “it was a very small chance that it could be something because my father’s sister was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years prior. I was like “no, it can’t happen to me, I’m too young and I breastfed both of my boys for an entire year you know that’s impossible” (who knew). So the results came back everything was fine but I still had the discharge so the doctor put me on an antibiotic for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days nothing had changed and at that point she said she needed to refer me to a breast specialist (I don’t know if it’s only me but I didn’t realize that the specialist was actually a doctor that specializes in breast cancer). Any who, at that appointment (and it went pretty fast, similar to my appointment with my new GYN) within five minutes the doctor was able to tell me based on what he saw that it looked like breast cancer and I asked him to tell me that information. I’m a very straightforward person and I just wanted to know what he thought since this was his area of expertise. So the next step was for me to undergo a biopsy.
From the biopsy he would be able to determine if it was breast cancer or not. Within 24 hours I received a call from the doctor confirming that it was breast cancer and that was a huge shock for me! I remember thinking “how bad is it” hoping and praying to be around for my children but then I quickly got myself in check and reminded myself of my relationship with God, my strength and my determination. I rebuked any negative thoughts and blocked the devil from trying to take over my mind! and I just knew that whatever the end goal was or however this ended, I was going to trust God the entire way no matter what! It turns out that I had stage III breast cancer. It was in my breast and my lymph nodes. I had to have a mastectomy and I opted for reconstruction surgery because I said “I was not walking around here with one titie” that was not happening so I started the process for reconstructive surgery and then from there I needed to have chemo and radiation. I successfully completed chemotherapy and currently have one week left of radiation.
Being diagnosed with breast cancer was most impactful for me because this is where my relationship with God was really put to the test. Throughout this whole ordeal my family has lacked nothing, we’ve been blessed, people have sewn into our lives, ideas have come, my relationships have improved. God has shown me things that he’s never shown me before (God can do exceeding and abundantly above all we ask or think!!! Ephesians 3:20). He has put new people in my life and he’s taken people out of my life and it’s just been an amazing ride and even going through all of this with Covid. Initially I didn’t want anyone to know that I was diagnosed with breast cancer because I wasn’t in a space to have conversations with people. I didn’t really want to be bothered with anyone and then I also didn’t know who were the people that were on my side, who were the people that we’re going to be praying for me to stay positive, who were the people they were going to be praying that I made it through, who were the people that were going to be praying for my family? I wasn’t really sure you know who those people were at that moment and I didn’t want to give people that weren’t in that boat the opportunity to pray negativity on my life so with consideration of all those things I decided I didn’t want anybody to know except my moms, my two grandmothers, my aunt and my dad. They were the closest to me and they were my support system during this situation. I asked them not to share anything with anyone until I was done with chemo and I knew that that would give me enough time to wrap my mind around it. This experience has allowed me to have deeper conversations with God, to grow a deeper relationship with God and be able to just deal with breast cancer in my own way without much interference or distraction. Once I completed chemotherapy I started to share my diagnosis with more people and it became easy. I feel good about sharing my story, I feel good about telling people about my relationship with God and my faith and how he sustained me through everything that happened and how he sustains my family and just like how awesome he is and just letting this be another part of my testimony. It felt good to me and I knew that I was in an awesome place and a part of me knew (even though I didn’t want to own up to it) that I can’t just keep it on the surface level with the people that were close to me I knew that I needed to be able to share this with other women globally. Because you know they say that when you go through things you’re not really going through them for yourself you’re going through them to help someone else get through. It has started to become real heavy on my heart to be able to share this testimony so that I could offer encouragement to someone else who may need it, someone else who may be afraid or scared or not know what to do and maybe doubting God or doubting themselves. I want to reassure them that they can get through this, to reassure them that they have what it takes and God will be all that he said he would be and that God’s word will not return unto him void!
