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Health24.com | Opera singer performs with daughter of her lung donor

An opera singer, performing after two double lung transplants has debuted a song she wrote to pay tribute to the immigrant roots of her more recent donor.

Human family

Charity Tillemann-Dick and her lung donor’s 24-year-old daughter, Esperanza Tufani, sang the song together in front of about 200 doctors and medical executives at a Cleveland medical summit on Tuesday. Tillemann-Dick wrote the song, “American Rainbow”, to honour her connection with her donor, a Honduran immigrant who died of a stroke in 2012.

“We are all part of this big human family, and I think transplants show that better than anything,” Tillemann-Dick said. “I breathe because of someone who came to this country looking for a better life.”

Tillemann-Dick was studying opera in Hungary when she discovered she had pulmonary hypertension, a disease that caused her heart to swell to three and a half times its normal size and was likely to be fatal without a lung transplant. After getting new lungs in 2009, Tillemann-Dick had what she calls “a tiny wisp of a voice.” A doctor told her singing high notes would kill her, but she persisted and went through months of therapy before starting to sing again.

Transplanting lungs has recently becoming easier, and a previous Health24 article describes how a new method could help keep lungs outside the human body for over 12 hours without significantly harming recipients’ chances of survival.

Second set of lungs

Year later, Tillemann-Dick’s body rejected her transplanted lungs, an experience she calls the most “devastating thing that’s happened to me”.

Tillemann-Dick expected to die, but in 2012 she received a second set of lungs from Tufani’s mother, whose lungs turned out to be a better match. Tillemann-Dick’s voice recovered quickly, and her debut album, “American Grace”, topped Billboard’s classical charts in July 2014.

‘No regrets’

Tillemann-Dick wrote a letter to Tufani, thanking her for her mother’s lungs. Ten months later, the two got in touch through a mutual acquaintance and became fast friends. Tufani, a Chipotle restaurant manager who aspires to become a singer, said it was tough for her at the time to decide to donate her mother’s lungs, as she had lost touch with her mother after her parents got divorced.

Today, Tufani has no regrets.

“I always wanted to sing with my mom, but I didn’t have that relationship with her,” Tufani said. “Getting to do that through Charity, it’s amazing. She doesn’t really realize how much of an impact she’s had on my life.”

Image credit: iStock

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Health24.com | Exactly what to do if you notice a lump in your breast

Three years ago, Sheeva Talebian felt an itch on her right chest. When she went to scratch it, she noticed something under her skin.

“It was like a round, circular pea,” she says of the lump in her breast. “I thought maybe it was a pimple because it was right at the top of my skin. So I ignored it and went to bed.”

Talebian, a doctor who is director of third party reproduction at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in New York City and is a co-founder of Truly-MD, had received a mammogram just six months prior. But she called her gynae anyway.

Her doctor said the small lump in her breast was probably nothing, and an ultrasound and second mammogram didn’t show anything concerning. But when she sought a second opinion, Talebian’s phone rang within 24 hours: “I dropped the phone and gasped,” she says.

“They told me I had invasive breast cancer.” The 6mm lump was tiny – small enough that Talebian herself had forgotten about it for a few months after she first noticed it – but her entire right breast had pre-cancer cells, and it had spread to surrounding tissue.

Read more: 5 cancer screening tests every woman should have

Fortunately, Talebian and her doctors caught her case early. She underwent a double mastectomy to remove the breast lump and surrounding tissue and was able to avoid chemotherapy treatment.

“I’m a doctor, but I have to be honest, I wasn’t doing a self-breast exam every month,” she admits. “I barely had any breast tissue, so in my head, I was like, ‘What am I even feeling?’ There was nothing really there.”

Now, of course, Talebian is adamant that women take control of their breast health. And turns out, that doesn’t necessarily mean monthly self-exams.

“We’ve always told women to do self-exams in the shower or lying down with one arm up, and to slowly and deliberately feel their way around the breast and nipple and into the armpit,” Talebian says. “But now there’s this new concept of breast awareness.”

That phrase about knowing something like the back of your hand? Today, gynaes are advocating that you know your breasts that well.

“Once you reach late adolescence or your early twenties, you should know what your breasts look and feel like,” Talebian says. “Know their size, shape, how they look in the mirror, how they feel, run your fingers across them occasionally – that way you know if anything suddenly feels different.”

Like Talebian, many women aren’t diligent about performing regular and frequent self-exams. So embracing breast awareness – particularly after ovulation but before your period –  could be the key to noticing changes in your breast tissue.

Read more: 3 random things that can Totally mess with your mammogram results

So let’s say you feel something. Now what?

“Do something relatively quickly,” says Talebian. “You don’t need to page your doctor at midnight, but if you’re 100% certain what you’re feeling is new, call your gynaecologist, primary care physician or internist. Explain that you feel something that wasn’t there before and stay calm.”

The reason to act quickly isn’t necessarily that the case can worsen within 24 hours –  it probably won’t –  but so you don’t forget about it.

“If you put it out of your mind, eight months down the road it may be bigger and you’ll remember you never made that call,” Talebian says. “It’s never too early or too silly to bring your concern to a healthcare provider’s attention.”

Read more: This really simple image could actually help you detect breast cancer

And remember, the earlier you can catch potential signs of breast cancer, the better.

“Breast cancer is one of the very few cancers we do have screening tools for, and if it’s caught early, that can have a huge impact on your overall prognosis,” Talebian says. “Breast cancer can start as a small bump, and it may take several years before it metastasises and you start to experience pain or symptoms from it. So there are no excuses. Most often it’s nothing or it’s benign, but in the off chance it is cancerous, the earlier you deal with it, the sooner you can put it behind you forever. If you feel something, don’t ignore it.”

This article was originally published on www.womenshealthsa.co.za

Image credit: iStock

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Health24.com | ‘Chemotherapy is scary but I got through it’

“It was during breast cancer awareness month, October 2016, when I found a lump in my breast,” Simòne Schultz says.

“An advert on TV reminded me that I had not done a self-examination in a while, and the minute I put my hand down I felt a lump.”

Simòne was in her third trimester of pregnancy.

“I wasn’t too worried. My gynae felt the same when I called the next day to let him know. A few weeks later he did a fine needle biopsy and three days later I got the call. It wasn’t good news… They had to deliver my baby a few days earlier and do another biopsy. It was not a death sentence.”

Seven days later, Simòne’s daughter, Kylie, was born. “She was absolutely perfect.”

Her stay in the maternity ward was half for baby, half for scans and tests.

“I was officially diagnosed in my hospital bed in the maternity ward and started chemotherapy when my daughter was three weeks old. It meant many nights away from her, but I accepted that I could not be everything she needed me to be at that time, and that getting better was my main priority.”

Simone with her daughter Kylie during cancer treat

Simòne and her daughter Kylie during chemotherapy

Chemo is a scary word

“Chemotherapy is a very scary word but I got through it,” Simòne says. “The wonderful oncology nurses are angels and they guided me through my six months of treatment. I had a lumpectomy in June and have completed 33 radiation sessions. Yes, I get tired, I am tired!”

Cancer treatments combined with two children under the age of five is definitely not easy, she says, but somehow you find a way to make it work.

“My husband, family and friends have been absolutely amazing through this whole ordeal. People that I hardly knew were showing me their support, even strangers. I do allow myself to feel sad too – I cry, I get it all out and then I let it go.”

Simone Schultz with her kids on the last day of he

Simòne with her children, Kylie (who is turning one on 14 November 2017) and Cody (who turns five in February 2018). 

Being a survivor 

“I’m proud of myself for handling what I have gone through. I was the type of person that gets paranoid and thinks the worst of the slightest ache and pain. Now, dealing with cancer l realise I’m a lot stronger than I could ever have imagined. With God by my side, how could I not be?”

Simòne says she knows that she will always worry about things a little more now.

“I will have to have regular scans and check-ups; that’s all part of the parcel when going through cancer. But life is carrying on at the moment and I don’t think about cancer when I wake in the mornings. I am adjusting to my new life and embracing my new normal.”

Image credits: Supplied and Cotton & Rust

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