Jenny Saldana

Jenny Saldana is a breast cancer survivor.

When I discovered that I had been diagnosed, it was a relief. I spent a lot of time trying to be diagnosed but because of my age several doctors ignored me. So once I found out, I was relieved a little bit, and after that, I had this mentality that I wanted to get to the other side. Everything was to get to the other side. I was in a hurry to finish my treatment. I was in a rush to graduate to get to the other side, and once I got there I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to react and it has been a battle.

When I graduated, they told me that I was a survivor. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know if I should be happy or if I should be sad. I didn’t know how to feel because there were a lot of emotions. When one finishes the treatment that’s when one realizes what you’ve been through. When one is in that mentality of graduating, in the hurry of the treatment, one is not thinking, “I have cancer.” One is thinking, “I have to finish this project.” Once this project is over, when one graduates and becomes a survivor, one says, “Wow, look at what has happened to me. Look what‘s happened to me. I can not believe what has happened to me,” and then it is in that moment that one begins to think and reflect and realize the severity of the situation.

I was diagnosed on January 4, 2006. Because of the size of the cancer and size of my body they told me that they couldn’t save the breast. They had to do a mastectomy, and they had to do it immediately. I was diagnosed on the 4th, and on the 25th they did the mastectomy. For the reconstruction they gave me the option of having an implant or reconstructing my breast using the tissue and the muscles of the stomach. That was what I chose. That same day they did the mastectomy, they cut my stomach and they reconstructed my breast from the tissue and the muscle of the abdomen. When I woke up I had two breasts. I have never seen myself without a breast. After that I took two months of chemotherapy and following that I took a medication for one year.

Having a surgery in the abdomen is extremely severe. I am cut from here to here (points to her stomach) and I was sitting in bed for one month. I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t stretch my stomach. When I walked I had to walk bent over for more than a month. It’s extremely painful. It’s terrible and I still have the pain in my abdomen. I still have areas where I don’t feel anything. I still feel pain sometimes.

I have areas in my abdomen where I don’t feel anything. That doesn’t bother me a lot. Sometimes it feels a little bit weird because if I touch it I feel I am touching a different person. Sometimes the pain is persistent. Sometimes if I use a belt the buckle bothers the incision. Sometime my breast hurts. They told me it’s that the nerves are still reconstructing themselves and sometimes that causes me pain in my breast. Technically I don’t have feeling in my breast, but it does hurt a little bit inside. It’s not so severe that I have to take medication or anything like that, nor do I have to go to the doctor for the pain, but it is persistent and it is something that I have had to get accustomed to and learn to manage the pain.

I am still extremely tired. I was tired the whole time during chemotherapy. I didn’t have energy to do anything. I got tired with anything. I am a person who walks a lot, and I walked one block and couldn’t keep going. I still feel tired. It’s not as severe as it was during chemotherapy but I do get tired easily and now I am conscious of the limits of my body. I am very conscious of when I have to stop. It wasn’t like this before. Before this wasn’t the case but now I am conscious that there are things that I cannot demand from my body because I get tired easily.

When you’ve graduated from your treatment you become a survivor. Cancer is something that is so personal to each person. What helped me was to talk. I talked to everybody. I told the whole world my story and that helped me immensely. It’s also the fear of the realization that you are finished, that the doctors are not going to be there every moment, that you don’t have to go every 3 weeks or every 2 weeks or every day. That is difficult but the best advice that I can give to a person who has graduated and who is feeling abandoned once it is over, is that she have a good relationship with her doctors, that she begin to try to enjoy what she couldn’t do before during chemotherapy. She should try to talk to other people. A person like me who has graduated, even though I don’t feel too strongly for another person, it would be an inspiration.

I love to meet other survivors. I love it because we understand each other and we are a fraternity that is very exclusive. God willing, there won’t be a lot of people who will be part of this fraternity. It’s helped me a lot to be able to talk and tell my story because that has helped me to understand what happened to me and to understand what happened to another person. I know I have been an inspiration for others and that has helped me a lot. It has helped me immensely.

The thought that cancer is going to return is something that it is never far away. What a person has to do is to try not to think about it, try to live every day. Of course there is a possibility that it can return, but I try not to think about it. It is something that I don’t like to concentrate on. It is something that is present. It is something that is in my mind, but it is something I don’t want to give the importance that that thought wants. I don’t want to be a slave to that thought.

Every day is a hope. Hope means to be here. Hope means family, my friendships, that God had never left me and that the day that I pass away it won’t be because of cancer.

I think my relationship with my family is very special. I believe that in our community the attitude towards breast cancer is quite different, especially for a young person. Several people told me, “They cut your breast and you must keep going forward, it is nothing, you are alive.” I don’t believe that they give the female body the importance that it deserves. I don’t believe that people believe there is a trauma associated with losing your breast. However, my family always understood me and always supported me and it was never difficult to communicate with them. Honestly, the most difficult thing for me was that I didn’t want this suffering for them. I wanted this to be my battle and not theirs. But of course the family always united and thanks to God for them. They have always been with me. That is what had hurt me the most, the fact that I didn’t want this battle for them. They didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve it either but it is very difficult to know that your parents are suffering because of something that is happening to you and you can not do anything about that.

My image of my body has changed a little. There are times when I feel fabulous. There are times that I feel I’m the most beautiful woman in the world and there are times when I don’t. There are times when I’m very conscious of my scars, I’m very conscious of my new breast. Sometimes I have this obsession with looking at my breasts in photographs and I’m always noticing that one looks bigger than the other. I show other people and I say, “Look, can’t you tell?” The person tells me, “No.” I am very conscious of the changes that have happened to my body. I’m very conscious of this new body and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m not happy with this body. Sometimes I’m not satisfied with this body. I feel that this is my backup body. I feel like I’m using my backup body and that my original body couldn’t survive this challenge, and sometimes that is very difficult to accept.

Even though I had medical insurance I did have some financial problems. When you’re hurt from work they only give you a portion of your salary. That was a very small amount for me to survive on while I was hurt. Even though I had medical insurance, I had a lot of debt from the hospital and other personal debts that unfortunately put me in a situation in which I had to declare bankruptcy. When I declared bankruptcy I had never had to apply for federal assistance, not any kind of government assistance. It alleviated my expenses. I had a lot of personal expenses. I had a lot of problems with credit cards and things like that. When the hospital bills came, that was what put me in that stage that I couldn’t do it anymore. I was earning less from my salary. It wasn’t possible for me to be able to pay everything that I owed and to live. What I had was enough for the rent for my apartment and for food and nothing more. I couldn’t do anything more. I don’t have any shame in admitting this. It was a decision I had to make and it was the best decision I could have made.

LIVESTRONG means that each day is a battle. Also each day is a gift, which means that I am more than victorious. It means that I am a superhero, that I am a strong person, a person with dreams and hopes and with a lot to offer to another person who’s confronting this situation.

Cancer should be a national priority because the word cancer is the ugliest word that exists in any language. It’s something that unfortunately can touch all of us. Nobody is excluded so it’s for that reason that it should be a national issue.

I think that in my country, the Dominican Republic, the stigma that cancer has is that “I’m going to die”, that a person who has cancer is going to die or that a person who has survived cancer should be satisfied with their life and nothing more. The emotional damage that cancer causes is not something that’s discussed. It’s not something that people are conscious of because what they think is that you’re alive and you should just keep going.

My name is Jenny Saldana and I have been a breast cancer survivor for 2 years.