Brighten Your Day

Share THIS Photo If Your Truly Want To Save Women From Breast Cancer

January 12, 2017

This week you may have noticed friends and family on Facebook posting red hearts in support of breast cancer awareness, but one woman is opening up about why a "cute heart" isn't going to help save lives.

Instead, Erin Smith Chieze posted the photo below, giving an explicit description of how breast cancer can look and feel, and it's going viral for all the right reasons.

She wrote:

"In the past few days, I have received quite a few private messages about a 'game' going around where you post a heart, then you are secretly supposed to state it is for breast cancer awareness. This is my response to all of these messages.

Someone once posted a picture on Facebook of what breast cancer can look like. Not feel, but look like. In December of 2015 when I saw an indentation that looked like one of those pictures, I instantly knew I had breast cancer. I tried to feel for a tumor, but my tumor was non palpable. I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 days later and with stage 4 the following month. A heart did nothing for awareness. I knew what breast cancer was. I knew all about self exams, but a picture of what to look for keyed me into knowing I had a terminal disease. We need to give REAL information, not cute hearts. Without having seen a picture randomly with real information, I wouldn't have known what to look for. Do us a favor, stop playing games with my life and start truly helping people. Metastatic breast cancer treatment research and real awareness.

This is a photo I have found that is very similar to the one I originally saw. PLEASE, stop playing games that do not actually promote awareness, they often cause people to tune out anything that might even mention the word awareness. So if you truly want to help people WITH cancer, or those who will GET cancer, share photos like this one. I wish I remembered who posted the original picture I saw, it truly did make a difference for me."

(h/t) popsugar