I want you to know that I am proud to say that on September 11, 2005 I will be 10 years cancer free. Yes, September 11th. This date has many different emotions for many different people, but for me, this September 11 is going to be a very happy one. Life is a rollercoaster and even if you hate rollercoasters, sometimes you just have to learn to hang on. People that I have met over the years have always asked how I have such a positive attitude on life with everything that I have gone through. I am not going to lie and say things have been easy, but I am the type of person who looks at life as with a “what I make of it” attitude.
I was 29 years old when I found out that I had breast cancer. There was no cancer in my family and every statistic that would indicate cancer, I didn’t have. Yet, here I was being told that it was cancer. At first I didn’t believe it. Me, have cancer? No, they had to be wrong, I had a daughter who was only 21 months old, a son who was 2 1/2 who has Downs Syndrome and I had to be there for them. They were just babies who needed their mom and I was not going to let anything, I mean anything, take me away from that. Yes, I can be a little hard-headed at times. Five years later my husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which we jokingly refer to as “Round 2” in life. Again, being hard-headed, we (as a family) tackled it head on. Now, we proudly say we are cancer-free.
Shortly after my husband’s diagnosis, I was contacted by a friend from a local TV Channel that sponsored “Buddy Check 9”. This was a program for women to contact other women once a month, and remind them to do a breast self-exam. I jumped at the chance due to the fact that not just one, but all of my friends had NEVER done a breast self-exam. Most didn’t even know how, please - we were all in our late 20’s to early 30’s and went to our OBGYN once a year, which had to be sufficient. Well, considering I had been to my OBGYN not 4 months before I found my lump in the shower, doing this promotion was something that I knew I needed to do.
Lisa Bersani
About a year after the commercial had originally aired, my family and I
were at a restaurant waiting to be seated when a woman came up to me and
said that she had to thank me. With a look of confusion on my face I asked
her why? Please, what could I have possibly done to have a stranger want
to thank me? She first asked me if I was really the one that had done the
promotion for Buddy Check 9, with a smile on my face I told her,
“Absolutely, it is something that I truly believe in.” Well, needless to
say my dinner was cold by the time we were done talking. She proceeded to
tell me that I saved her life. She had seen the commercial and realized
that if it could happen to someone at 29 maybe she should start checking
herself. Sure enough she found a lump. She was able to have the lump
removed and with radiation they felt that she would not need any further
treatment. She had never done a breast self-exam before, but was now happy
that she did. The doctors had told her that if she would have waited, she
may have needed a lot more treatment. Although life has no guarantees,
there is always someone there for you when you need a shoulder.I hope that my story can touch someone else’s life with such a great outcome. Remember to never give up - life is waiting for you to embrace it. How you choose to embrace it is up to you