Kimlin Tam Ashing

Breast cancer is a particularly devastating and intimate disease. Although not as deadly as some other forms of cancer — five-year survival rates in the United States are between 80 percent and 90 percent — the toll that breast cancer takes on the body, mind, and psychology make it an especially difficult disease to contend with.

Following are ten inspiration stories from breast cancer survivors — some of them in their own personal words. Survivorship is broken into three categories: Acute survivorship: This is just after getting the diagnosis of breast cancer. Women often experience "the shock" and immediately start thinking about life decisions.

Your body makes great efforts to fight off many diseases on its own, but it must have the right resources on its side to be able to do that. Poor nutrition reduces mental function and productivity as well as diminishes your body's immunity against diseases such as cancers.When you are getting sufficient calories for energy and sufficient nutrients to support body function and growth, you can say you have good nutrition.

Sometimes the option to remove both breasts is based on the disease, and sometimes it's based on the disease plus a patient's anxiety. The guidelines do state that if you have left breast cancer, you can have a lumpectomy with radiation or a mastectomy. Yet often women choose to remove both breasts to reduce the risk of getting another breast cancer.

Targeted therapy is also called biological therapy. It affects specific protein-receptor targets (called biomarkers) found only on cancer cells. These protein-receptor targets are responsible for the growth and spread of cancer cells. Targeted therapy medicines block the growth and spread of cancer because they interfere with processes in the cells that cause cancer to grow.

Breast reconstruction can be done at the same time as the breast cancer surgery (called immediate reconstruction). It can also be done in a two-stage process where tissue expander (a temporary placeholder) is placed at the time of breast cancer surgery. For the final breast reconstruction, a synthetic implant or tissue from another part of your body is used to complete the procedure at a later date.

There are several surgical options for treating breast cancer, but it is your stage of breast cancer that determines which surgical options are best for you. Breast reconstruction is when a surgeon rebuilds the breast using one of two main types of breast reconstruction: implant or your own tissue (tissue from belly, back, thigh, or buttock).

Radiation, or radiotherapy, involves the use of a beam of high-energy rays to kill cancer cells in your breast or lymph nodes under your armpit or chest wall. Radiation therapy is usually recommended after a lumpectomy, when the breast cancer has spread to the lymph nodes under the armpit, or after a mastectomy and the surgical margins are still positive for cancer.

Breast aches and pains are cause by compression of the nerve endings in the breast. Basically, neurotransmitters in the nerves send messages to the brain that the breast hurts. Anything that causes the nerves to be compressed can cause breast pain, including a breast mass, breast cyst, fluid/inflammation (which can be caused by infection or trauma), and scarring.