By Jessica Baladad
“When I grow up, I’m going to get breast cancer and create an AI app that could save lives all over the world!”
Said me, never.
In fact, when I was in the 4th grade, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I had aspirations of being a reporter in New York City, telling stories that uncovered hidden truths and shed light on inspiring human experiences.
I was eventually published in the Big Apple, but my journey to get there was wrought with surprising detours that catalyzed a shift in my career trajectory.
Let’s go back to 1994.
I turned nine in March and bought my first CD – TLC’s “Crazy, Sexy, Cool.” At the time, I thought I embodied the album’s theme as I sang the lyrics to songs I had no business repeating. Thirty years later, I find myself getting embarrassed as I recall singing “Red Light Special” with my parents in the car.
But that same year, I was introduced to the concept of mortality when I learned that my dad’s sister, my Aunt Debbie, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. And it wouldn’t be the first time the news hit us. When you include my diagnosis, breast cancer has affected four generations of my family, with 14 women having faced the disease.
At this time, no known gene mutation has been found in my family lineage.
Growing up with the reality of cancer affecting my loved ones, I was hyper-aware of the fragility of life and the importance of self-surveillance. I just didn’t think it was something I’d really have to worry about until I got old. You know, like 30.
My perception changed when I turned 18.
I had just graduated high school, and I was eager to pursue my dream of being a journalist. The post-9/11 recession hit my family hard, but my ambition drove me to work multiple jobs to pay for college.
One day while taking a shower between shifts, I was washing my chest when I stumbled upon a lump in the lower half of my right breast.
I assumed it could only be one thing – cancer.
Was I too young to get cancer at 18?
In 2003, we didn’t go to Dr. Google to diagnose our ailments. I had to sit with impending doom until I could see a medical professional, so I made my first appointment to see a gynecologist.
The lump was initially diagnosed as a cyst, and I was told that it would go away with my next menstrual cycle. And if it didn’t? Well, no one had any reason to believe that it wouldn’t go away. I had my next period, and it felt like the lump had gotten smaller, but it didn’t disappear.
During the fall semester of my freshman year of college, I was walking to class when I felt a pain in my right breast. I sat my bag down at my desk and ran to the bathroom.
The lump had grown.
After class I made a doctor’s appointment, and was referred for an ultrasound. A few days later, I received news I wasn’t ready to hear.
“The lump in your breast isn’t a cyst. It’s a solid mass.”
In that moment, there was only one person who could help me, my Aunt Debbie.
Aunt Debbie was in remission at the time and doing great. She was a nurse, and to me, that meant she knew everything.
(I still don’t think I’m wrong.)
I let her assess the lump in my breast, and when she felt it, she gave me the first news of relief that I could grasp.
“It moves,” she told me. “That’s a really good thing.”
I eventually decided to have the lump removed. The surgery would be an out-patient procedure, and I wouldn’t miss much class.
On the day of surgery, the lump was biopsied. I learned it was a benign tumor called a fibroadenoma, something that’s actually pretty common in women of menstruating ages. And though I was told that it shouldn’t reoccur, I promised myself I would do self breast exams every month.
Let’s fast forward to 2018.
I had been married for 3 years, I had a successful career using my journalistic skills in various industries, and thought I was entitled to the rest of my life.
Since then I had lost my Aunt Debbie to metastatic breast cancer. But as promised, I had been keeping up with my self breast exams, a routine that would save my life.
Two days after seeing my practitioner for my well woman’s exam, I found a lump in my breast while taking a shower.
My heart sank.
“No way,” I told myself. “I just went to the doctor. She didn’t say anything to me about this.”
Was I too young to get cancer at 33?
I hopped out of the shower, and in 2018, Dr. Google had become the unconventional tool for diagnosing, though I cannot recommend doing this. Please always consult with your medical provider if you find anything abnormal in your breasts.
I eventually went back to the doctor, and was referred for screenings.
While laying in the dark ultrasound room, trembling in anticipation of my fate, the radiologist peered at the screen as the tech went over my breast and under my arm.
“Get that lymph node, that big one,” the radiologist said.
I abruptly sat up and stared at the screen.
“LYMPH NODE?!” I exclaimed.
“Look, I’m not going to sugar coat this,” the radiologist said. “I’m pretty sure it’s cancer.”
About a week later, his premonitions were proven correct through a biopsy. At 33 years old, I would be fighting the same disease that had plagued generations of my family for nearly a century.
While going through my pathology and preparing for chemotherapy, I was losing my dad’s other sister, my Aunt Linda, to metastatic breast cancer.
I had to miss her funeral to start treatment.
When I made my first appointment with an oncologist, it wasn’t difficult to find one. The same man who treated my Aunt Debbie and my grandmother would treat me.
As we went over my pathology together, we talked about my Aunt, and I asked a lot of questions. That’s when I decided I would be unapologetically relentless against breast cancer.
Because cancer ran in my family until it ran into me.
My treatment plan consisted of 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and 24 rounds of radiation. I went on to have a prophylactic hysterectomy, and later chose to have DIEP Flap reconstruction, a procedure that used tissue and blood vessels from my stomach to recreate my breasts.
I went into remission in 2019, and once again, I felt entitled to have my entire life ahead of me.
But that changed nine months later in March of 2020.
During the pandemic, the NFL reached out to me to help them work on their Crucial Catch campaign for October. That’s when I learned that women were missing their screenings and being diagnosed with breast cancer at later stages.
Knowing that a self exam saved my life, I felt called to do something bigger than just share my story on social media. I decided to create an app that would give women more control of their breast health advocacy in a time when they felt like they didn’t have control over their medical outcomes.
It would be called Feel For Your Life, and I wanted it to show women how to perform self exams, track and monitor their progress and set monthly reminders.
Nothing like it has ever been created by a breast cancer patient.
It launched in the fall of 2021, and while a career in journalism didn’t take me to New York, Good Morning America learned about my app and featured my story, which led to it reaching tens of thousands of women all over the world.
Today, Feel For Your Life is the only self-exam app with AI. This year I re-launched with a functionality inside the app that can interpret a woman’s labs and screening pathology and translate it into terms she can understand. It’s called BreastFriendAI, and instead of Googling the meaning of the terms in reports, you can copy and paste the verbiage into the prompts, and it will respond with empathy and understanding as it breaks down the terminology while also giving you customized questions to ask your doctor, based on what your report says.
A self exam saved my life at 33 years old, and I never thought a simple act of self care would become my life’s work. Some people have said that I can’t base my entire identity on breast cancer, but the reality is, it’s literally in my DNA.
Jessica Baladad, a five-year cancer survivor who transformed her pain into power, becoming a passionate advocate for women globally. She founded “Feel For Your Life”, a free mobile application that provides resources on how to perform self breast exams and when to get screenings, while allowing users to track and monitor their changes and set reminders to do self exams. Jessica’s own history with cancer drove her dedication to personally building her app. She first learned how to perform a self breast examination after having a benign tumor removed in college. Jessica was later diagnosed with Stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma. She had found a lump during her routine self exam, and her practitioner had documented it as “normal”. As a result of her diagnosis, Jessica underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, 24 rounds of radiation, a hysterectomy and 10-hour flap reconstruction.
Upon creating Feel For Your Life, she not only gave women the tools to perform and track routine self breast exams, Jessica built a community where women feel safe and supported to advocate for their own health. She is the first cancer survivor to develop these resources. Jessica’s advocacy goes well beyond the mobile application. In the State of Tennessee, Jessica helped write legislation to promote risk-reducing measures against cancer and disease. Billed as the Feel For Your Life Act, it requires high school students to learn about self breast exams, testicular exams and skin exams. Additionally, Jessica has spoken out against insurance companies before members of US Congress. She is working to eliminate quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) scores, Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBMs) and co-pay accumulators for patients. Jessica plans to grow her efforts by further developing her relationships with pharmaceutical companies and advocating for patients to gain better access to healthcare without the bureaucracy of insurance companies.
You can follow and connect with Jessica on Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin.
