It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but really this shouldn’t be the only time of the year when anyone thinks about breast cancer awareness. It would be great if breast cancer took a break and only appeared during one month of the year. Then it would be easy to get people to listen, educate themselves and do whatever is necessary to prevent it from spreading. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Breast can affects millions of women and men each year and it doesn’t take vacations.

However becoming aware of what you need to do prevent breast cancer can save your life.

I don’t think I can stress enough the importance of doing monthly breast self-examination or getting a yearly mammogram. This is especially important if you have a family history of cancer.

I do, both my grandmother and my mother have had breast cancer. So needless to say, this is a very important issue with me. It’s also a heartbreaking one, because when my mother originally felt a lump in her left breast, she ignored it. She’d had benign cysts before and assumed that was the case again. Mom had also stopped getting yearly mammograms, which could have also detected any abnormalities.

I pleaded with her to go to the doctor, but mom is stubborn and refused to do anything until she felt a lump in her right breast too.

By then it was clear that something was wrong, and we were definitely not dealing with anything that could be ignored. Mom had cancer, and what followed was a double mastectomy, the removal of her lymph nodes and months of cancer treatment that will take months for her to recover from. I could tell you horror stories about what she has been through, but I am hoping to help anyone who reads this article from ever having to face that.

Please, if you feel any sort of abnormality in your breasts, contact a doctor immediately. This includes you too men, since you can get breast cancer too. The American Cancer Society reports that about “1,970 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in men” this year with approximately 390 of them dying from it. Even though breast cancer is “100 times less common among men” it is still important for them to be aware of it, so they can alert themselves to any signs or symptoms.