Please meet Nana Kathy Bray and read about her life, her battle with breast cancer and her grandchildren. I met Kathy on NanaHood’s Facebook page and asked her if I could share her story. There are so many women our age fighting breast cancer that I felt like many of us could relate. Leave her some comment love and encouragement and show her how supportive the NanaHood Community really is!

My name is Kathy Bray and I have 3 children; 1 boy and 2 girls. My son has 3 boys ages 15, 13, and 10 and my youngest daughter has one son who is 3 and one on the way. My oldest daughter is pregnant with her first boy. This will be 6 grandsons. The girls babies are due 2 weeks apart. These babies are such a blessing for me as I have been battling breast cancer since October 2014. Now I will have them to focus on .

I have always kept my grand babies . I have always had a home daycare for the last 26 years but I retired after my cancer diagnosis. The hardest thing about having cancer was not being able to keep my youngest grandson everyday like I had for the first two years of his life. I missed him so bad.

I went through chemo then a mastectomy and finally radiation. I finished treatment at the end of July. My daughter would bring my grandson on Friday nights and they would spend the night. Of course my husband of 39 years loved it too. The older grandsons came over on weekends and would help around the house. I have been blessed with wonderful children and their spouses and of course the best grandsons in the whole wide world.

More pictures of Kathy’s family!

Kathy’s blessed with a loving supportive family and says she has, “The best husband (pawpaw) anyone could ask for.”

Recent Information on Breast Cancer:

From BreastCancer.org

U.S. Breast Cancer Statistics

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• About 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.
• In 2015, an estimated 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 60,290 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.
• About 2,350 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2015. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.
• Breast cancer incidence rates in the U.S. began decreasing in the year 2000, after increasing for the previous two decades. They dropped by 7% from 2002 to 2003 alone. One theory is that this decrease was partially due to the reduced use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by women after the results of a large study called the Women’s Health Initiative were published in 2002. These results suggested a connection between HRT and increased breast cancer risk.
• About 40,290 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2015 from breast cancer, though death rates have been decreasing since 1989. Women under 50 have experienced larger decreases. These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening, and increased awareness.
• For women in the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.

 

From National Cancer Institute an article about the 4 types of Breast Cancer.

Please leave Nana Kathy a comment and some encouragement!