This viral photo shows you all symptoms of breast cancer
This is so important for women.
This is so important for women.
This is so important for women.
The recommends that adult women should perform self-exams at least once a month — which seems daunting when you're not exactly sure what to look and feel for. But a viral photo from KnowYourLemons.com of all things, lemons, is shedding some light on easy-to-recognize symptoms.
Facebook user Erin Smith Chieze shared the photo from the two years ago, and every year around October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it resurfaces. To date, it's gotten more than 47,000 shares. Here's why:
The lemons serve as a way to show physical indications of breast cancer, like bumps, growing veins, peeling skin, dimpling, fluid and redness. But the image, created by Corrine Ellsworth Beaumont from London also details those symptoms you can't see but can feel: invisible lumps, bumps and thick masses.
Chieze shared the photo after her own diagnosis. "In December of 2015 when I saw an indentation that looked like one of those pictures, I instantly knew I had breast cancer," she wrote. "I tried to feel for a tumor, but my tumor was non-palpable. I was diagnosed with breast cancer five days later and with stage 4 the following month."
And because Chieze felt there was a lack of information to help her during self-exams, she decided this lemon photo was worth sharing with others.
"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," she said. "We need to give real information — not cute hearts. If you truly want to help people with cancer, or those who will get cancer, share photos like this one."
The lemons show, clearly and without cute hearts, what cancer looks and feels like, even going as far as to show a stray lemon seed — because that's what a cancerous tumor can feel: hard and immovable.
This coming month, do your part to help other women and share the photo.