Dear Editor. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Women have a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer in their lifetime. If you haven’t been diagnosed with it, you likely know someone that has. Look around. It doesn’t care if you are young or old, Black or White, rich or poor, single or married. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate.

I encourage each and every one of you to remind the women you love, your wife, mother, sisters, daughters, aunts, cousins and friends, to get their annual mammogram. If there is a history of breast cancer in your family it is important to start the monitoring process earlier. I also encourage every woman to do your monthly self-exam. It doesn’t take but a few minutes, and those few minutes could be the difference.

It was through a self-exam that I detected a lump that later led to a diagnosis of breast cancer 13 years ago this month. I was only 29 years old and fought it again at ages 31 and 33 and unfortunately a little over a year ago it metastasized to my right lung. I did not have a history of breast cancer in my family, but because it was detected at such an early stage, and by the grace of God, I can sit back and call myself a 3-time breast cancer survivor and thriver.

God Bless, Danielle Beverly