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Test Those Breasts ™️
This podcast by Jamie Vaughn is a deep-dive discussion on a myriad of breast cancer topics, such as early detection, the initial shock of diagnosis, testing/scans, treatment, loss of hair, caregiving, surgery, emotional support, and advocacy.
These episodes will include breast cancer survivors, thrivers, caregivers, surgeons, oncologists, therapists, and other specialists who can speak to many different topics.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and not all information in this podcast comes from qualified health care providers, therefore does not constitute medical advice. For personalized medical advice, you should reach out to one of the qualified healthcare providers interviewed on this podcast and/or seek medical advice from your own providers.
Test Those Breasts ™️
Episode 58: Oncology Dietitian, Alison Tierney's Breast Cancer Journey & Nutritional Advocacy
How would you confront a life-changing diagnosis at 33, especially when you're an expert in the very field that now defines your battle? Join us as we welcome Alison Tierney, a board-certified oncology dietitian and a resilient breast cancer thriver, who shares her powerful story of being diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma shortly after completing her breastfeeding journey. Hear firsthand how Alison's professional background in oncology nutrition both guided and challenged her through her treatment, providing a unique perspective that is both enlightening and deeply personal.
In this episode, Alison recounts the emotional roller coaster of discovering a lump during a routine OBGYN exam and the subsequent whirlwind of medical tests that led to her diagnosis of DCIS with microinvasion. Experience the heart-wrenching decisions she faced, including undergoing a double mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction, compounded by the weight of a family history of cancer. Alison's candid reflections reveal the highs and lows of her journey, from the relief of negative genetic testing results to the stark reality of her path to recovery.
We also spotlight the significant, but often overlooked role of nutrition in cancer treatment and survivorship. Alison passionately discusses the gap in nutritional guidance for cancer patients and the critical need for oncology dietitians. Her insights into staying professionally active in the cancer space underline the importance of empowering survivors through knowledge and holistic support.
Find Alison Tierney:
Wholesome LLC on Instagram
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Cook For Your Life Website
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I am not a doctor and not all information in this podcast comes from qualified healthcare providers, therefore may not constitute medical advice. For personalized medical advice, you should reach out to one of the qualified healthcare providers interviewed on this podcast and/or seek medical advice from your own providers .
Welcome to Season 2 of Test those Breasts podcast. I am your host, jamie Vaughn. I am really excited to continue this journey and mission into 2024 to help shorten the overwhelming learning curve for those who are newly diagnosed, or yet to be diagnosed, with breast cancer. It has been such an honor and a privilege to be able to connect and interview many survivors, thrivers, caregivers, oncologists, surgeons, nurses, therapists, advocates and more, in order to provide much needed holistic guidance for our breast cancer community. Breast cancer has become such an epidemic, so the more empowered we are, the better. By listening, rating, reviewing and sharing this podcast, it truly does help bring in more listeners from all over the world. I appreciate your help in spreading this knowledge. My episodes are released weekly on Apple, spotify and other platforms. Now let's listen to this next episode of Test those Breasts. Well, hey, friends, welcome back to this episode of Test those Breasts. I am your host, jamie Vaughn. I'm so happy you're here Today. I am super excited and happy and I can't wait to hear this story for you. And I can't wait to hear the story for you.
Speaker 1:Her name is Allison Tierney, and Allison is a board-certified oncology dietician and cancer thriver who empowers those affected by cancer to conquer fears, take back control and fully support their body before, during and after cancer treatment. In 2022, allison was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma at the age of 33. Her knowledge base of oncology nutrition supported her through surgery, chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Today, she uses both her professional and personal experience to help cancer thrivers to do the same. Using evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine, allison guides her clients through recommendations to reduce treatment side effects, enhance quality of life, focus on recurrence risk reduction and, ultimately, helping cancer thrivers reclaim the control cancer tries to steal. Her passion for cancer nutrition isn't just a passion or a profession. It's also very personal. Allison hello. Thank you for being here. It's so good to see you.
Speaker 2:Hello and thank you so much for having me. It's just an honor to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we've had a conversation in the past and you and I are pretty passionate about being healthy and understanding that you're not too healthy to get cancer. You're not too young to get cancer and you are living proof of you are 33 years old and, by the way, I was diagnosed in 2022 as well, so you and I were fighting the battle together without even knowing each other yet. So, gosh, you know, I'm really happy that you, number one, had the knowledge that you had before cancer and that you are just using that knowledge and your own personal experience to help other cancer patients. So I always ask breast cancer survivors who they were before breast cancer, and I know it's a pretty deep question because we look back, we're sort of the same person that we are at the core now, but there's so many things that happen through a trauma like that. So who was Alison Tierney before breast cancer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is such a great question and I think I like how you phrase it who was Alison Tierney before? Because I often think about it more so as who is Alison Tierney now, after cancer, because I think I have different insight in answering that. So I'll do my best to answer the before cancer. So the before cancer, alison was a mama of two who had faced infertility two times and I thought that was going to be maybe the hardest battle that I had gone through, and breast cancer and infertility are very different. But I also think that infertility prepared me for breast cancer in a specific way. So a mama of two and a wife and someone who just really enjoyed being active, was maybe relatively spontaneous and didn't have too many worries, and also an oncology dietitian. That was actually part of who I was, because it's really important to me and it's always been a passion and, as you mentioned in the intro, it's more than just a passion now. So I think I've really transformed since my cancer diagnosis in that area as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I've talked to surgeons who supported breast cancer patients for a long time or oncologists who supported breast cancer patients for a long time and they never had it, and then all of a sudden they're in that position. It's like whoa. I was always treating people like me through their own journey or trauma or whatever you want to call it, and so you had so much knowledge. Let me ask you something when you were diagnosed, were there a lot of things that you didn't know? Because I knew a lot about breast cancer and I always took care of my breast health a lot and there were so many things that I knew. And then I was just diagnosed and I was just slapped with so many things I didn't know. And I'm just curious, being in the profession that you were in, was there anything that was kind of a surprise at all?
Speaker 2:That's such a good question and I don't mean this to say like I knew everything, because I definitely don't. I think I had a good idea about what was to come, but only to the extent of an outsider's view. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of people that I've helped through this journey. I've experienced their struggles only from an outward perspective. I always said I don't know what it's like to sit in that chair, and when I say that chair I mean the chemo infusion chair or whether it be the chair in the oncologist's office. I was always sitting in the chair next to them, so I didn't have that experience of what it's like to sit in that chair. But I will say that what was and has been so difficult in my journey is actually knowing a lot of what is going on and from the standpoint of, I think sometimes innocence is a little bit of bliss. From that standpoint I knew somewhat of what I was going into, somewhat, right, I don't pretend to know fully and I think sometimes that was maybe more anxiety inducing, for example when I had my surgical pathology results come back and we were waiting for the prognostic factors, right. So whether it was estrogen, progesterone and or HER2 positive. I knew that if it came back as HER2 positive I would be looking at a full year of treatment and I remember reading the results from my MyChart which I shouldn't have done and crying to my husband is, if this comes back positive, I have a full year of treatment ahead of me and there was that wave of fear and anxiety and looking at the mountain ahead of you and how overwhelming that can be. So I don't know what the experience would have been like had I not known that right. Would I have had just as much anxiety? Would I have had more?
Speaker 2:It was a very unique situation from that perspective and being in the oncology space as a care provider in it was also really unique because I remember when my nurse navigator was also a previous colleague of mine and a friend of mine. When I first told her she said do you want me to be your nurse navigator or do you want me to be your friend? And I said both, as I navigated my own treatment at the same facility that I used to work at was a very interesting experience as somebody who the cancer center knew as a professional and now is a patient, and I had a hard time letting my guard down from that respect. So very interesting, unique, lots of things to break down there. So I think that played a huge role in my experience in a good way and a difficult way.
Speaker 1:That makes total sense. Part of my audience that I really want to reach are people who've never been diagnosed, because I do want them to know more, but it doesn't have to be as detailed as what you knew necessarily. I will say that when people are diagnosed, regardless of whether they're in that medical space or not, it is very, very overwhelming and scary, because there is a lot of information coming at you all at once and you're like, oh my God. But there are things that you find out later on and that also can be this emotional rollercoaster thing. I do believe that people should know enough to understand that they're probably not going to die, especially the medicine is so great today and then folks out there like you supporting people through nutrition and things like that.
Speaker 1:But it's hard to know that when you don't know enough about the treatments and what people have gone through before you and have been able to come out on the other end feeling good about themselves and stronger and all that stuff. So like we're on the other side, does it mean that things are finished? No, you don't ever go back to this normal that you once knew. We always have that fear in the back of our mind. And then there's all these other cascading things that happen, like for me.
Speaker 1:I have a really super rare anemia that came out of another tumor that they found at the same time that they found the breast cancer. So it's like, no, you don't just have breast cancer, you have another big old tumor in your. And then I had to learn I could do a total Ted talk on this really rare anemia that I have. But that's really an interesting perspective and I appreciate your sharing that with us. Let me ask you, when you were diagnosed and you kind of came out with whoever you came out to, with all your friends or whatever, were people a little bit shocked that you had breast cancer because you were so healthy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I mean the number of times that I heard someone say you're the healthiest person I know. How could you have breast cancer? Because I always say I can check all the boxes when it comes to what you should do to reduce your risk of developing cancer. I could check every single box, right Of the modifiable factors. There were non-modifiable factors that I did have. So absolutely, especially at the young age. My mom is a two-time breast cancer survivor and a one-time thyroid survivor. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at 49 and I was diagnosed with it at 33. That's a huge age difference. My mom was still young 49 is still young to have breast cancer and so for me to have it at 33, it was definitely a shock to everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. So then walk us through your diagnosis, your treatments. What was that all like for you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. My diagnosis kind of started actually 10 days after breastfeeding and finishing that breastfeeding journey with my second child. I had had an annual OBGYN exam, just a regular routine one after finishing breastfeeding. It just happened to be 10 days later and during that exam, during a breast exam, my OBGYN found a lump and we didn't really do anything about it because I had just finished breastfeeding and breasts can change so much during pregnancy and nursing. I had also previously had a lump between my pregnancies that went away. We had that ultrasounded turned out to be nothing went away. So during this exam it was okay, we find a lump, let's keep an eye on it, type of thing.
Speaker 2:I remember just shooting the breeze with my doctor as it was no big deal, but then I went home and made sure I paid attention to it. What made me really pay attention to it was not only my family history but the many young breast cancer survivors that I've worked with in a professional capacity that were my age or younger. It was that, of course, realization that I'm not too young to ever have cancer. So I kept feeling it and every time I felt that lump the way that I describe it is it was just I had anxiety every time I felt it. It was just like this really weird feeling. And so I was actually preparing for a conference where I was the primary speaker on breast cancer nutrition. And as I was preparing for the presentation, I was going through some of the research, making sure everything was updated on my end and came across a little clip that talked about breastfeeding, pregnancy and breast cancer. And although that it's rare, it does happen. And even though I knew that, seeing that little clip of research was what put a little bit of a nugget in me that said you need to get this checked out further. That day I messaged my OBGYN, said no, it's been a few weeks, it hasn't gone away. I've had a cycle, still hasn't changed. I need to get this checked out for peace of mind. And she was also the same OBGYN as my mom, so knew my family history went on it right away From the standpoint of Yep, let's get an ultrasound ordered. So it was ultrasound, and during that ultrasound I have a iPhone like Apple Watch and it dings with notifications.
Speaker 2:While the tech left the room, my MyChart dings and said you were just scheduled for a new procedure. And I was like I knew it. I knew it, I'm getting a mammogram. This is not the way that it's supposed to be. And they walk in the room and they say, you know, they tried to play off like it was no big deal, because they're like, well, you know, they tried to play off like it was no big deal because they were like, well, you know, you just finished breastfeeding. You need to get a better picture at it. It's routine, blah, blah, blah. And these people in particular didn't know that I worked in this space and I was like, okay, this is not good. So, anyways, then I had a mammogram.
Speaker 2:Right after the mammogram, the cancer center and the women's center that I was at they do results before you leave, which is incredible. Like you, you don't leave that building without your mammogram results, which is pretty incredible in how fast it happens. So I go into the next room, the radiologist walks in and I immediately I just see the look on her face and I know what. I know what she's about to tell me. So, anyways, she told me that I believe I know what I'm looking at, but we do need to confirm it with a biopsy. So I ended up having a biopsy later that day and she was pretty confident it was breast cancer. But 48 hours later had the confirmed diagnosis with pathology and that original diagnosis was DCIS with microinvasion, which means that it had stayed into the mammary gland and just left a tiny little bit. And then I told you I was preparing for that presentation in that conference. So that was a Thursday that I was officially diagnosed.
Speaker 2:I boarded a plane on Friday, went to the conference the medical conference presented on breast cancer nutrition, came home on Sunday and everything else kind of went from there where I met with my surgeon. And when I met with my surgeon I naively went in thinking that I was going to have a lumpectomy and that was going to be it and maybe we just caught it super early. Oh no, the tumor was located too close to the nipple. You need to have a mastectomy. You can't preserve the nipple. You need to decide if you want to have a single or a double. And out of that I had decided to do a double.
Speaker 2:But then a couple days later my genetic testing came back and came back positive for a genetic mutation. So the recommendation from there was going to be to have a double mastectomy anyway, and I was glad that I had already made that decision in my mind to have a double mastectomy, because once that genetic mutation came back positive, it was a little bit of a blow to be like, oh really, and it's because I know the stats of how many cancers are caused by genetic mutations. But it also made a lot more sense with my family history my mom, but also both grandmothers on both sides. My grandfather passed from liver cancer and my godmother, who's my mom's cousin, is a breast survivor as well. So it made a little bit more sense in the genetic area. And so, anyways, my surgeon also told me that I wasn't presenting as DCIS and she was concerned that it wasn't just DCIS and that it was potentially invasive. So I had a mammogram guided biopsy after that. So I had two biopsies. That biopsy still came back as DCIS, with microinvasion.
Speaker 2:So we proceeded with the surgery, which was a double mastectomy, and I chose to have DFLAP reconstruction, which is using your own tissue to recreate the breast. During that surgery they tested the sentinel lymph node, or the closest lymph node to the tumor, and it was negative for cancer, which was great, which means that I wouldn't have had needed to have radiation and that I could proceed with reconstruction. So they did the immediate reconstruction with the double mastectomy right then and there. But then the week after my pathology results came back of a different diagnosis. So it was originally DCIS and the pathology confirmed that it was actually indeed invasive ductal carcinoma because there was more than one tumor in the breast, and so it kind of reconfirmed what my surgeon was originally thinking. But it was kind of a blow to us because I wasn't going to need initially chemo and immunotherapy and so forth and my husband and I had talked about that that we wish they had reminded us of that going into surgery. Remember that we were concerned that it might still be invasive. So kind of prepare yourself. We weren't prepared for that to happen.
Speaker 2:So from there then I came back. Kind of a long story short. There was lots of testing that had to be done there and it came back that I was actually triple positive, meaning that I had estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor positive and HER2 positive, meaning that you have that targeted therapy which, thankfully, her2 positive breast cancer. It used to be a very high recurrent type of cancer and once Herceptin came out I can't remember what year that came out, I think it was the early 2000s, late 1990s, somewhere around there and it's a very targeted therapy that has drastically reduced the risk of recurrence in HER2 positive cancers. So it's a really great thing because we have this research available to show like that helps reduce the risk and this drug available. However, it is a full year treatment.
Speaker 1:So once you found that out, you're like, oh, it's going to be a whole year now, great, yeah, these are things that I did not know. My oncologist said give me six months. But we know that it's more than six months because then you have the Herceptin and Progetta and all the you know for the remainder of the year and everything. So, yeah, one full year. Yeah, so that was mine, her two positive. Mine was ERPR negative.
Speaker 2:Okay, gotcha, yeah, so, yeah, you definitely had that treatment too, and I think my youngest was 15 months old when I was diagnosed, thinking about that whole year ahead of me, I mean, of course, I think we're all allowed to feel angry and frustrated by our diagnosis, and there's never a good time to have cancer.
Speaker 2:I was very frustrated and angry that I felt like I lost that year of watching my youngest grow up I mean, even my oldest too, but that really amazing phase of when they start walking and when they All those things, that was all a blur for me and even to this day she's three and I feel like she's so much older than that because it feels like a lifetime since I've been pregnant and had her, because so much has happened in between her birth and going through treatment and everything. Yeah, did you video a lot With my kids? Yeah, oh, definitely. But you know, it was nice. I was able to have a really good setup at home in terms of recovery, where they would come visit me in my room and they also were so helpful and wanted to bring me drinks and they wanted to bring me food and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it was so great to be able to have them there, but that's a part. Parenting during cancer and cancer treatment was probably my most difficult piece of the journey for me, yeah, totally understandable.
Speaker 1:I've talked to quite a few young moms who went through the same type of situation and it's definitely a difficult and challenging time. And then I was gonna ask you about your genetics. So obviously you did test positive for the gene. One of the things I wanted to tell you was I don't know if you know who Kristen Dahlgren is for the Pink Eraser Project. It was called the Pink Eraser Project and then she changed it to Cancer Vaccine Coalition and she's a former NBC correspondent.
Speaker 1:I just interviewed her just a couple of weeks ago. She had breast cancer and she found out that there's a vaccine that has been used and so she started this nonprofit to fast track the vaccine for her, to positive her to, you know, cancer. So I thought that was really cool. Yeah, it's exciting stuff because I mean, that's such a big deal and I guess apparently when she first started working on it, it's like, oh, yeah, we'll be able to get it out in about 20 years. And she's like 20 years, like no, we need to bring these doctors and researchers together now and get it out there way sooner. And it's coming. So your survivorship what's life like in your survivorship? What are you doing to give back to the community, give back to the breast cancer community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I think survivorship every survivor can probably attest that survivorship is a wild ride as well. Right, there's kind of these ups and these downs, and I actually had to debate for a long time and do a lot of self thinking and to decide if I wanted to stay in the cancer space professionally because it was so raw, right, and I was still going through treatment as I was deciding this but I decided that it was a space that I wanted to stay in because I felt like, both professionally and personally, I had a lot to offer the community and wanted to be able to give back and help people that don't have access specifically to dietitians during the course of either their treatment, their surgeries or in survivorship. Unfortunately, there was a study survey that was done in 2020 that found that for every 2,300 cancer patients, there's only one cancer dietician. It's not enough and we know that when it comes to nutrition, nutrition intervention during the course of treatment can reduce side. Most people, a lot of people around the country, but also around the world, don't have access to somebody that can help them to make these nutrition changes during the course of treatment to help support their body. So I wanted to make a change in that area, and so I'm pretty active when it comes to social media and sharing information and sharing tips and free resources to help spread the knowledge that nutrition makes a difference.
Speaker 2:And it's really unfortunate to see that nutrition is not talked about during most individuals treatment protocol, and there's various reasons for that. One of them is that oncologists commonly are not trained in nutrition. It's not even required to have a nutrition class in a medical school. Yet a lot of patients actually look to their oncologist or their physician for nutrition guidance, but they're not qualified to give nutrition guidance unless they have specifically sought out nutrition education, which is much more rare, and they also don't have time to talk about it during the visits with the patient and the physician.
Speaker 2:So from there, it's really important that we have oncology dieticians available so that people can work through these issues during the course of treatment. So I think it's about making more awareness that nutrition makes a difference, educating other health care professionals about how nutrition can be helpful during the course of treatment and also into survivorship, because oftentimes treatment's over and it's like see you in three months or see you in six months and nutrition and healthy lifestyle is never really talked about again. I think that piece is missing so hugely because the support falls off. So that's where I'm trying to concentrate some of my work in free resources and free content. But I also have paid programming and so forth beyond that, if people are interested in looking further, I like that.
Speaker 1:We're talking about what healthcare providers need to know. So I remember when I went in I was given a packet full of stuff and nothing was really ever explained to me. Everything was so overwhelming that I don't even think I looked in that packet. Honestly, one of the things that I discussed with quite a few people is trying to get an oncologist even to say they don't even have to spend a lot of time talking about it, but they can say look, one of the most important things to do through your treatment is make sure that your nutrition is on point.
Speaker 1:And here is a card to Alison Tierney or whatever however they want to do it. Here's a card. You really should give her a call and have her walk you through some of the things that you should be doing while you're going through treatment. That's all they have to say, and I will say that my original surgeon, who actually put my port in and took it out she was going to be my breast surgeon until I ended up leaving town to go get the deep flap surgery. She actually had some good knowledge about nutrition and I was very impressed by that. When I came home I told my husband I go. I really like the fact that she spent quite a bit of time talking to me about nutrition. I thought that was very impressive, and I know that that's not happening everywhere. But even if the surgeon and the oncologist or radiologist or whoever can say nutrition is a big deal, you need to reach out to this person or whatever.
Speaker 2:So and even to that point I wanted to make the point that sometimes if they put the referral in depending on the hospital system, then we can automatically get connected.
Speaker 2:I remember very specifically one of my star clients, I guess you could say, was she admitted very first when we met.
Speaker 2:She was like I thought this was just going to be another boring appointment with a dietician and it was just going to tell me to eat fruits and vegetables, right, and she goes. And then I realized what you had to teach me and I started listening. Sometimes, if you should contact the dietitian, it should, in my opinion, be more of a hey, we have this great dietitian on staff. She will come and see he, she, whatever, doesn't matter, we'll come see you during the course of treatment and help you with your nutrition, because when we're overwhelmed, I'm not going to make another call to set something up right, like there's very few people that are going to seek extra care from the standpoint of because it is so overwhelming and to add another thing to the plate and that's what was so beneficial I think of when I did work in the regular cancer care is that I could come see patients when they were already there for treatment instead of having to stack on other appointments for them and lengthen their day at the cancer center.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that makes total sense. So go a step further and say this person is on our staff, this person will be with you the whole entire time. So kind of like, make it part of the treatment, like this is not something that you need to just call if you want to, this is part of the treatment. Yeah, no, that makes total sense, love it. So where can people find you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am most active on social media, on Instagram, and that Instagram handle is wholesomecancernutrition, so wholesome cancer nutrition. And then I also have a website, wholesomellccom, and on there I share recipes, I share blogs with information, and those are probably the two top ways to find me when it comes to getting to know me and how I practice, and then also the information about nutrition and cancer.
Speaker 1:Love it, and I will have all of that in the show notes. You also have cookforyourlifeorg and wegotthisorg. What are those?
Speaker 2:Those are not affiliated to me, but I do think that they're great resources for cancer patients. So Cook for your Life is an organization that has recipes available and you can filter based on the side effect that you might be experiencing, like nausea, for example. So I think it's a great resource for patients that are growing through the course of treatment. And then we got thisorg is another nonprofit organization, and what I love about it is the generosity of people is so amazing.
Speaker 2:Commonly when you are diagnosed with breast cancer or any type of cancer, but people oftentimes want to help but they don't know how. So we got thisorg is a place where you can create your own registry, just as if you were having a wedding or a baby, and you create a registry of what you need. It's a registry for during the course of treatment or cancer or surgery, for the things that you need. And that can be helpful Because I always tell caregivers too is that people want to help but they don't necessarily know how to. So this is a great way for the individual to say, hey, I need support with this and essentially put it on their registry and individuals can help to support them through that. So it's such a great organization. It's run and founded by a stage four breast cancer thriver, so something to check out for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's really cool. I need to reach out to this person. Yeah, I hadn't even clicked on that when you sent it and put it into the show notes part. That is really awesome. What a great idea. I'm reaching out to that girl. Yeah, do you know her personally or have you communicated?
Speaker 2:Yep, We've met and interacted and in the next coming weeks here I'm going to be creating some of my recs as a dietitian and as a survivor about. Here are some ideas of things that people can put on their registry to support them nutritionally or throughout the course of treatment and surgery.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fantastic. I just love the breast cancer community. When I was diagnosed, one of my friends who had it she says oh, jamie. She says you wait? She says the breast cancer community is like the sisterhood of all sisterhoods, you know, and I've met some brothers too, and so it's just such a huge community and there's so many people who are out there helping and supporting and I just really appreciate that and I appreciate you, alice.
Speaker 1:You've taught me some things and every time I have an interview, even though I am in my survivorship, I learn something new all the time.
Speaker 1:And this is my last question I want to ask you, because I always ask people, what kind of advice would you give to people who've never been diagnosed?
Speaker 1:And the reason I ask it is because not necessarily that they have to know full on what they're in store for because of what you knew when you went in, because not everybody needs to know that much, but I do want it to be on their radar, and especially people who are younger, like you were, or people don't have it in their family, like you had both. You had it in your family, you were young, but there are a lot of people who are young, don't have it in their family and think they're fine, and they don't really have it on their radar, even though we know one in eight women will get breast cancer at some point in their life if they live long enough, right? So, having those statistics, I feel like people need to have it on their radar, like how to take care of their breast health and stuff. What kind of advice do you have to give to people like that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Number one is definitely do self breast exams and if something changes from one month or another and it consistently gets bigger or continues to change or whatever it might be, continue to pay attention. And then, if you have a concern, bring it up to your doctor. And if your doctor says you're too young, it's probably nothing, and you're still concerned about it, keep asking questions. In my perspective, no matter how old you are, a lump blood in your stool, a swollen lymph node that doesn't go away, anything like that is guilty until proven innocent. And so if your doctor won't proceed with getting an ultrasound or whatever it might be, because my doctor did right away, but my doctor knew my family history and was very proactive of it. But I've heard a lot of young women say well, my doctor said I was too young for cancer and then, however much later, it turns into stage three or stage four cancer right when we can catch it earlier. So if you have a concern, seek answers until it's proven innocent or guilty and do it as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely and don't feel bad about it. I mean, I have a voice and I've always had a voice, but I really had to find that voice even more because there were a few mistakes that were made and I kept asking questions and I may have come across like a jerk or whatever, but I don't care. Be the jerk that you need to be to get to the right answer Right Cause you know your own body right. So, or at least you should Gosh. Thank you so much, alison. Look, tess, those Breasts is now a nonprofit and I do have a website that is up and running. It's not quite finished yet, but I am working on the resource page, and one of the things I wanted to do with this nonprofit is have an exhaustive resource page where people like, if I have nutrition, nutrition throughout your treatments or in after treatment, click on there and we will see Alison Tierney's information on there. And I'm asking you for your permission officially can I put your information on my resource page?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That would be an honor, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, and I want to reach out to, to that gift registry, talk to that person too and put that on there. I just want people to have it at their fingertips, easy to find, easy to find that support, and that's my biggest mission. So and so, test those breasts, make sure you go and use your voice and make sure that you are paying attention to your nutrition, and reach out to Alison Tierney. So, thank you, alison. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we wrap up?
Speaker 2:Well, just thank you so much for having me and thank you for the work that you do to spread the knowledge that you know.
Speaker 2:Awareness is the first step of all of this, and the last thing that I want to leave people with is really a focus on controlling the controllables.
Speaker 2:None of us are completely immune from cancer and we were never too healthy or too young to be able to get cancer. But what we can do is we can help control the controllables when it comes to modifying our risk factors, which is nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress reduction, social connectedness, etc. These are incredible things that we can do to help support ourselves before and, hopefully, to help reduce our risk of developing cancer, but also these things can help during the course of treatment and any survivorship when we have lost a little bit of control. These are the things that we can control, and I want to just encourage people to focus on those things and try to let the rest go. I could focus all day long, if I wanted to, on the fact that I have a genetic mutation and it drastically increases my risk for this, this, this and this type of cancer, but I have to let that go and focus on the things that I can control, and so here's to controlling the controllables.
Speaker 1:Yeah, incredible words of wisdom, Thank you. Well, thank you again, allison, and to my audience, I really appreciate your joining us again on this episode of Test those Breasts. As always, I really appreciate when people rate, review and share this podcast, and we will see you next time on the next episode of Test those Breasts. Bye for now, friends. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Test those Breasts. I hope you got some great much needed information that will help you with your journey. As always, I am open to guests to add value to my show, and I'm also open to being a guest on other podcasts where I can add value, so please reach out if you'd like to collaborate. My contact information is in the show notes and, as a reminder, rating, reviewing and sharing this podcast will truly help build a bigger audience all over the world. I thank you for your efforts. I look forward to sharing my next episode of Test those Breasts.
