This Awesome Woman is Sharing Wellness Hacks to Help Women Thrive
Jessica Baladad is reaching out to all women via app.
There are some inspiring people who live through a challenging life event and then celebrate their life-affirming resilience by giving back. Jessica Baladad, a caring millennial cancer survivor, is one of them.
This is a young woman in her 30s who recently concluded gruelling treatment for breast cancer. She endured 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and reconstruction, 24 rounds of radiation , and a hysterectomy. And now this inspiring, community-minded person has just created an awesome new resource for breast health advocacy.
New self breast examination app, Feel For Your Life
Feel For Your Life is an app with a byline of “Be Your Own Health Advocate” that launched on both Android and iOS in September. It is designed to help all women do a self breast examination. These self checks mean that any anomalies, often small lumps in breast tissue, are spotted fast. This can offer women that do need medical care, the game changing benefits of earlier diagnosis and treatment.
This is significant, as the Feel For Your Life iOs app page details that “According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, 40 percent of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump, so it’s important to develop a routine.”
In addition, with most routine screening usually offered to women over the age of 40, self-exams can be lifesaving in picking up breast abnormalities in younger women, prompting them to seek medical advice.
But this user-friendly app, beyond offering tips on doing a self exam, also allows users to track their self breast exams, set reminders for doing them, collaborate with their medical provider and also contribute to a private community where they can engage with other women on topics related to breast health. Information on genetics counseling and types of breast screenings is also readily available.
Overcoming obstacles
As the app’s website explains, Baladad, an American from Tennessee, started Feel For Your Life as a social media outreach project to encourage women to be their own breast health advocates.
As she told Good Morning America (GMA), the idea of helping others came to her like a lightbulb moment in the midst of her own suffering, midway through cancer treatment:
"One night I was in the shower literally watching my life go down the drain as I watched my hair come off my head and the idea just kind of came to me," she said. "I felt like I was called to do it."
Baladad decided to extend her efforts to include an app after Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October encouraged her to reach more people.
She has also identified obstacles that held women back from staying on top of their breast health which made her want to do something to help: “They were afraid of finding something and not knowing what to do, they weren't comfortable with their bodies, and they didn't know how because no one's ever showed them or talked to them about the importance of a exam, so I thought, 'I need to advocate for this.'"
From a woman’s perspective
In the process of creating her Feel For Your Life app over the past year, Baladad shares that she thought about the app from a woman’s experience. Her goal was for it to be intuitive for how a woman may want to use it.
She is also clear about her role as an advocate for breast health rather than a medic: “I'm not a doctor and I'm not trying to be a doctor — my mission is to help women advocate for their breast health," she told GMA.
Women have welcomed Baladad’s free app with enthusiasm. Take this five-star review from J Hendricks from September 2021: “Amazing tool - you’ll never forget your self exam. I love the simplicity of this app and how much it achieves without being overwhelming. There is so much useful information for any woman - no matter her stage of breast health. I personally love the reminder setting. This is a godsend to me because I do exams when I think about it - and don’t do them regularly enough. Thank you so much for your advocacy and drive to put information in the hands of all women!”
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