Header image by the glorious Ms Modesty from Modesty Ablaze

Breast Cancer Awareness – check your boobs – I’m checking mine, you should too

This was chosen as an Elust Top 3 post

Ok so I must include a content warning – this is my first vlog – it is rough and ready as it is inspired (if I can use that term) from being unsettled by a Breast Cancer Awareness campaign.

In this blog I do a breast examination on myself so you will see it all – yes not unusual for my blog but it is in video.

I discuss breast cancer and being affected so avoid if you think this might be triggering for you.

I wanted to make something real and sensible to do a bit of awareness raising myself.

I am not a health professional at all. I simply followed guidance from pamphlets – if you have any concerns, *please* consult your doctor.

There is a transcript of the video below.

Thanks for watching…

*note* I asked for a medical opinion and whilst this video is accurate enough for a self exam, a doctor would check deeper into the armpit and pay more attention to the nipple. Thanks to Livvy for her insight ❤️

Video Transcript: (apologies I couldn’t figure out how to add subs)

Hi so I did not expect this to be my first blog *talking to dog* Hi daisy, this is my dog.

This is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and this morning I saw some things on raising breast cancer awareness which of course is wonderful, however I do find some of it a little bit upsetting or just a bit strange. One of them was two massive inflatable boobs being taken around the country to raise awareness of Breast Cancer.

Great, however as someone who’s been affected by breast cancer, I found it upsetting to see two giant boobs. It’s not funny… to me. And also when my family has been through Breast Cancer, we’re stoic we use comedy, make fun of things not really feeling like things are really serious enough for us to be upset about – people always have it worse. But I did find this upsetting and it’s not like me to make a big deal of it. Anyway, it just highlighted to me that maybe there is some way of raising awareness without so much gimmicky stuff. Like you might get sent a private message on Facebook to put a love heart on your timeline, and not say anything. I get those messages quite a lot and I always think, well how is that raising awareness?

You can see bare walls, my vlogging was meant to be. I’m waiting so I’m going to have lovely posters by Hazel Mead and it’s all going to be lovely and I’m going to have a revamp, however, here we are, and I’m just going to start.

So I couldn’t really find anything.

anything really that’s – theres’ illustrations and cartoons on how to do a breast exam so I just thought I’ll just do one for you. And we’ll see how that goes. I’m really nervous, lord knows even what bra I’ve got on. If it’s hanging by one thread if it’s filthy I have no idea. I’ve ben doing a bit of research, we’ll do a breast exam. See what happens. You are encouraged to do one every month around the same day of the month so that you can acknowledge any changes that happen. I’m guilty myself of rarely doing them – which is really bad, so yeah I found the campaign distasteful but here I am about to check my breasts – so there’s balance there. So I’m just going to go for it.

Got my dog walking clothes on, like I say lord knows. Here we go – oh not too bad we’re lucky.

So I’m going to do it with my boobs out, because ‘hello’ so the first thing you have to do – look at your own boobs. How often do you do that? Probably not very often, so you’re looking for, any changes in the shape or the size. Turn to the side, check there’s no differences – check there’s no puckering of the skin, no discharge from the nipples – any heaviness, if you feel any heaviness there, that’s something to look for. And any orange peeling of the skin, any redness tenderness, anything that looks unusual to you.

And then you lift up your arms, to see if you can see any shadowing or lumps there, so if you lift your arms it’s really important to do that. Familiarise yourself with your own boobs.

When you’re going to palpate your breasts you take three fingers, the flat of your fingers so that you are actually noticing something unusual not just the gristly breast tissue that we all have which sometimes – another reason to familiarise yourself.

You should really be lying down. So we take it right up to the armpit, in circular motions all the way to the sternum – right under your breast, right up. Make sure you’re gentle but firm, make sure you’re feeling all around, and then do the other side,

Like I say when I’ve seen videos I’ve not seen anyone doing it themselves so, here we go – comment, tell me if I’m doing anything wrong, I mean maybe there’s a reason why they’re always illustrated, or you know because you know, maybe this is just too much and maybe they just don’t like to see boobs – *laughs*

The other things is to lean forward and to look into any lymph nodes might be affected – lean forward that sort of shows your boobs too.

Yeah I’ as surprised as you are that I’m doing this today – hopefully it was sensible, big lesson is, familiarise yourself with your own boobs, make sure you know what your own boobs are like and do you know what else? Talk to your friends – get your friends to show you their boobs look at their boobs have a look at each other’s boobs – you know. I often take photos of mine – and that’s quite good because you can look back and see what they were like before, if you’ve noticed a change. Again, the appearance for my vlogging was meant to be all lashes and you know lipstick *laughs* so you’ve got me as raw as it comes. I hope that you’ll come back for more vlogs, I probably won’t be getting my top off but I will be talking about sexual things, good healthy wellbeing etc. Here’s to breast cancer awareness whatever form it takes and,

Yeah, check your boobs *starts crying*

Love Tabitha x x I will share this on my Youtube channel when I find out if it won’t get banned for *gasp* nudity…

Love you x x