When you were diagnosed, you probably thought, “I am too young to have breast cancer!” While it’s true that breast cancer is diagnosed in older women more frequently than in younger women, you are not alone. In fact, there are more than 250,000 women who were diagnosed at 40 or younger living in the United States today. Every year in Alabama, approximately 3506 women are diagnosed with breast cancer according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.

Working after your diagnosis may be difficult depending on your specific diagnosis, treatment plan, and what you do for work.

The true lifetime financial impact of having cancer is not known, and varies from person to person. Some of the main concerns we hear about are: women without insurance who are asked to pay for their treatment, the cost of time lost from work due to doctor’s appointments, and the cost of co-pays and medications.

Sometimes a cancer diagnosis can make you feel that your life has stopped or changed in such a way that it will never be the same.

Talking to your loved ones about your diagnosis and treatment and maintaining communication can be difficult. However you can’t expect them to know how you’re feeling unless you tell them.

Personal relationships can be a difficult thing to navigate for all people, but particularly for some breast cancer survivors. Some women who are already married at the time of their diagnosis have fears that their relationship with their spouse will change, and others who are not married fear that dating will become much more difficult.

At the time of your biopsy or surgery, your doctor looked closely for “receptors” on the breast cancer tissue that was removed. Receptors are a protein that is present on the surface or in the inside of the breast cancer cell. These receptors interacted with something else in your body (most often some type of hormone) and caused the cell to change or grow and make the cancer.

230,000 women develop breast cancer each year, and 5-10% of these cases are hereditary in nature. Hereditary breast cancer occurs when there is a single hereditary cause for breast cancer in an individual or family.