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The “Frasier” star’s breast cancer diagnosis freed her from her fears

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Michael Blanchard for the Pink Agenda

When Toks Olagundoye looks back on the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she remembers it clearly. The Nigerian actress experienced an avalanche of emotions, but not those that you simply would necessarily expect.

“At first I was annoyed,” she tells ESSENCE with a chuckle, explaining that she had already had a mammogram, so she thought she knew what to anticipate from her doctor. “He calls and says everything is fine, and I keep going,” says Toks. This time, nonetheless, that was not the case. Olagundoye was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, which in accordance with American Cancer Societyis a more “aggressive type of invasive breast cancer” that may spread quickly, has fewer treatment options and can have worse outcomes. Black women, women under 40, and girls with a BRCA1 mutation usually tend to be diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer than women in other demographic groups.

Discovery Calm within the storm

However, the wife and mother admit that the diagnosis also brought an unexpected sense of relief. Olagundoye’s family history of cancer is extensive and has all the time been predictive of diagnosis. “There is a lot of cancer in my family, especially on my mother’s side,” she says. “All my life I thought I would probably get something. I thought, “Well, I don’t have to worry about getting anything anymore.” Now I’ve dealt with it, I can fix it and move on.”

The diagnosis got here while she was a part of the solid of the Paramount+ series. Due to the diagnosis, she underwent five surgeries, including a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Despite the rigorous treatment plan, the actress continued to work and tackle latest projects.

The
Jeff Gottlieb

“Luckily I didn’t have to work every day and they were really good with my schedule because I had three surgeries during the show,” she recalled. “I’m lucky because I love what I do.”

After the filming was accomplished, the actress with a theater education modified the topic and through treatment she only accepted voice-over projects. Her manager and agent never hesitated to alter things and ask for extensions on assignments and deadlines when she was too drained from chemotherapy to work. She also confesses the support of her loving husband and fogeys who helped her survive this difficult period. “I received really good support. My mother and husband drove me around Los Angeles,” she said. “I sat with gratitude for most of it.”

Opportunities amidst adversity

The additional blessing she had been grateful for throughout the battle got here in the shape of a brand new opportunity. She selected to play Olivia Finch, head of Harvard University’s psychology department, within the Paramount+ reboot of the classic comedy series.

“When I got it, it was two weeks after my last chemotherapy. I was exhausted but very grateful,” she says. “There are so many people on the show that I have always wanted to work with. I was honored and proud to represent the black community on a show that was so white.”

Before her diagnosis, Olagundoye was overthinking to the purpose of hysteria. But this time her experience didn’t allow it. From the primary day on the set of the series, she felt that something was just different.

“I used to be very excited to be there. I assumed: Just come and memorize your lines. That’s all you want to do. I just listened to what the administrators and producers told me and did my best to point out it and be present. Everything prepared itself because that is all I could do,” she says. “It was a truly emancipating experience. I usually worry about whether I’m doing my job well. I had just been hired looking the worst I had ever looked in my life, so I thought, “I actually have nothing to fret about.” I actually have a terrific job and I’m just going to take a seat there.

The
Jeff Gottlieb

Adding to this gift is the exceptional team on set. She praises the solid and crew and its leader, Kelsey Grammer.

“He did a lot for Black people on television,” he says. “He’s a person who insisted I wear my natural hair, and after I desired to wear braids, he said, ‘I feel it’s beautiful.’ This is what white men should do. Use your power to assist everyone else. Representation is so essential to him, our writers room is amazing.”

The actress found that her newfound sense of peace as an alternative of hysteria and intimidation would carry over to other areas of her life as well.

“I realize that everything will happen as it happens, whether you are worried or not. There is no reason to raise cortisol and drive everyone crazy. I don’t want to upset anyone else. I don’t want to make anyone’s day worse.” she says. “I’m glad my son won’t learn this level of anxiety from me.”

The power of self-care

In addition to learning to let go of such concerns, breast cancer has made Olagundoye a staunch advocate of self-care for black women.

“We deserve it. We have been taught that we don’t deserve the life we ​​have. We have been taught that we must accept the crumbs they give us. We deserve the best,” he says. “If you look at black women and what we do and give to the world, we are valuable.”

She emphasizes that taking good care of yourself includes leading a healthy lifestyle, constructing a trusted healthcare team, getting annual exams and knowing the fundamentals of breast health.

“If we don’t take care of ourselves, who will take care of our families?” – Olagundoye asks. “Go to the annual meetings. Learn to look at your breasts. Get to know your breasts and the way they feel so when you might have a lump that should not be there. If you are feeling like there’s something incorrect with you, when you feel there’s something incorrect along with your body, go consult with your doctor. If they do not take heed to you, go consult with another person. I do not care if it takes you seven months to search out someone, keep going until you do. Until you get the imaging or tests you would like. If you’ll be able to afford it, get genetic testing. We deserve the most effective.”

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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Health and Wellness

Doctors report an epidemic of severe reactions to cannabis

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Gary Payton, Green Label Rx


The growing epidemic is reportedly sending New Yorkers to hospitals due to severe reactions to cannabis.

According to doctors, the disease called ‘Scromiting’ comes from the mixture of ‘screaming and vomiting’ experienced by people affected by extreme pain. A potentially dangerous condition of vomiting is seeing revival amongst regular cannabis users, many find yourself in hospital, reports say.

Doctors are still working to understand a medical condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), which may lead to seizures, kidney failure, and in some cases even death. Experts imagine that symptoms often appear after long-term, heavy marijuana use, often for a few decade.

AND investigation revealed that the number of cases of CHS is increasing and that doctors now describe it as a “common” problem. One doctor lists CHS as a typical diagnosis because he often sees patients affected by this disease. Another said he sees him “every week, if not every day.”

The strange thing is that doctors are still working to understand how hot water often relieves symptoms. However, this solution can mockingly lead to injury as victims spend hours in hot baths or showers trying to relieve symptoms, sometimes burning themselves in the method.

Scientists are still investigating how long CHS lasts, the way it develops and why it affects some people. Early symptoms may persist for years before progressing to a “removing” phase, which can last several days before disappearing, even though it may return.

The only known way to prevent relapses of CHS is for users to stop consuming cannabis products. Quitting smoking could be a problem for individuals who have been using cannabis for a protracted part of their lives. Doctors noted that many CHS patients often began using cannabis of their teens.

Current theories on what causes this condition suggest that long-term exposure to cannabis may overstimulate certain receptors within the body, destabilizing the gag reflex. Some doctors also point to the increasing potency of cannabis products amid an increase within the use of legalized cannabis as a possible contributing factor to the rise in cases.


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Philanthropist April Love on why she ignored doctor’s calls after being diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer

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April love

April loveThe Atlanta, Georgia-based philanthropist, media enthusiast and A-listers brand strategist has been a breast cancer survivor for over a decade and has made it her life’s mission to encourage women, especially women of color, to care for their bodies with holistic, preventative practices and early detection.

Let’s return to Christmas Eve 2009. Love was informed by doctors of her diagnosis of stage three ductal breast cancer after easy check-ups with her doctor and the suggestion that she undergo a routine mammogram, considering she was 35 years old on the time.

Shocked by the news, Love continued to disclaim her diagnosis and ignored calls from her medical team to schedule chemotherapy. She found the inner strength to face her diagnosis by conducting breast care awareness activities that enabled women to receive proper education, appropriate support and financial assistance while undergoing various treatments.

Love achieved remission a yr after undergoing two months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation therapy and surgery. Today, she continues her philanthropic efforts as a creator, host and executive producer Pink awards. This annual charity event raises funds for breast cancer patients who’re unable to financially support their families during treatment. In 2022, the Charge Up Campaign presented April with a Community Impact Award in recognition of her efforts to extend breast care awareness amongst women of color.

Essence: Tell me about your experience with breast cancer.

April love: I’m 13 years old, thriving, as I wish to call it, because surviving sometimes sounds a bit like I’m just waiting for things to vary, but I just do not feel like that. I feel like I’ve had, you recognize, a journey with cancer that has fulfilled a purpose in my life and created a purpose for me.

I went for my annual check-up and she scheduled me for a radiology appointment, which I had never been to before. So I went. She wanted to examine my thyroid after which scheduled me for a mammogram. I used to be over 30 years old, so a mammogram wasn’t necessarily something I dreamed of. After the mammogram, the doctors said they wanted to look at me again. They then took me back to the radiologist, showed me the realm of ​​my breast they were concerned about, and suggested a biopsy. I received the biopsy results around Christmas Eve from the identical breast surgeon, who asked me if I used to be alone, which was disturbing. She continued: “Well, we were concerned that you did indeed have breast cancer, and quite advanced ones at that. This is stage three.”

The surgeon wanted me to are available the day after Christmas to start out my breast care plan. So I spent that vacation desirous about all the pieces from having a mastectomy as to if I desired to have children, which led to a mental breakdown. So the surgeon only heard from me in early 2010, after a health checkup. Once they got me on the phone, the surgeon asked me, “Do you want to live?”

The light bulb went off and I spotted, “Yes, I know.” On that day, weeks had passed because the diagnosis was confirmed, and so my journey began.

Has your primary care doctor noticed anything disturbing? Or possibly just, “Hey, you are a certain age. We think it’s best to get a mammogram. Or possibly you felt that something was improper?

I still do not know. She never said if she felt anything in my chest. I’m sure I did because I immediately felt a lump as soon as I saw the actual image and the issue area.

Diagnosing breast cancer in black women may be difficult because we have now lots of fatty tissue and plenty of lumps and lumps in our breasts. Have you experienced any discharge, nipple discoloration, or other symptoms?

NO! And for it to be stage three cancer, I had no symptoms. Nothing even gave me any idea what was going on. There was no leakage, local pain, or discoloration; it looked like a tumor the dimensions of a golf ball. So, surprisingly, I didn’t.

Can you talk in regards to the specific style of breast cancer you suffered from?

My breast cancer was estrogen receptor ductal carcinoma. It is essential to know the source of the cancer cell and the way it got there. My cancer is hormonal. It’s a slow process, but it surely’s a highly regarded process, for lack of a greater word, because as young women, you recognize, we, especially black women, have irregular periods. I used to be taking contraception to control my period. I consider my cancer was brought on by a rise in estrogen levels in my body. So this slow-growing tumor was probably about ten years old in my body. I can have a physician or anyone who denies what I say, but I attribute it to the contraception I took as a youngster.

So why did you initially ignore treatment recommendations and what was your turning point?

Honestly, it was, you recognize, just an old fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the misunderstanding that individuals robotically associate a cancer diagnosis with inevitable death. I didn’t know if I wanted this, what I desired to do with my body. I do know I didn’t need to cut off each breasts. There were so many things and so many unknowns that I just did not have the strength to deal with it.

So once you choose on treatment, you go for chemotherapy, right? Can you persuade our readers to make this decision?

I used to be really interested by holistic medicine, alternative healing modalities, and other forms of healing. And yes, once I inform you, I 110% didn’t need to undergo any chemotherapy. But once I talked to the breast surgeon and realized what stage I used to be at and that I actually desired to live, I said that I’d just leave it in God’s hands and I assumed: I’ll just do it. do chemotherapy.

My process was non-traditional because they typically attempt to do the surgery immediately. They desired to remove the cancer from there, but they desired to shrink mine. I also had one lymph node, which was concerning because that may be a sign of metastatic cancer that’s moving throughout the body. So I knew I needed to act quickly.

So I had chemotherapy, first surgery, after which radiotherapy. But it was terrible. I even have been on Adriamycin, which is named “The Red Devil” in our community, and it’s by far the worst thing I even have probably experienced. I at all times said, “This is as close to death as I can get without being dead.” Because I’d should make decisions like: will I’m going to the toilet, will I’m going to the fridge to eat something? water?. Because I had no strength left. I felt sick. I lost 40 kilos. My nails turned black. I had lost my hair, so all the pieces from physical problems to the vanity of being that sick person within the mirror, chemotherapy just isn’t something I would need on my worst enemy, but I felt I needed to make this decision.

Now that you just are in remission, how do you’re feeling about beating breast cancer?

It was traumatic, painful, uncomfortable. But for me, it woke up something in me.

Can you tell me why you created the Pink Awards and decided to assist other women fighting breast cancer?

It form of got here about once I was organizing these pink parties. I even have at all times been a publicist and event organizer. I worked within the entertainment industry, so I used to be already social, and I used to be blessed to have such a community of individuals around me: family and friends. They brought me food. But I spotted that there have been so many discrepancies, a lot misinformation, and little support. If people were diagnosed, they weren’t even given the chance to decide on. There have been a number of support groups, but for probably the most part these organizations and I don’t take their work frivolously. They are associated with Big Pharma and their goal is to acquire a greater drug or support treatment. And I desired to create, not only through performance, to spotlight the very fact of disproportion in our community. Be alone, however the incontrovertible fact that it kills people day-after-day, this disease will affect you; even when it isn’t you directly, it’ll accomplish that not directly.

The show attracts attention and awareness, and the work reaches and informs people. That’s why I began this: to amplify the message about things that I personally know are deficient in our community.


This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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Op-Ed: We have 2 weeks to complete our work. We can do this. This is how we will win this election – Essence

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If we all do our part in the subsequent two weeks, Kamala Harris will be our next president. But our job is difficult. We cannot vote alone. We need to help others mail their ballots and get to the polls. We can’t simply talk to individuals who agree with us about our hopes for a Harris presidency and the hazards of Trump. We need to talk to people who find themselves considering not voting and even voting for another person.

This is our task now. I’m not saying it is often easy. And it can’t at all times be fun. So I’m writing this article to offer some suggestions – and belongings you can say – that will make this job a bit easier.

We all know that there will be nothing higher than waking up after November 5 and seeing how well we did our job – seeing how much it paid off to change this election and seeing that Black people got here out on top. Because that is what it’s all about, ensuring that Black people come out ahead in this election.

We need to make this clear to everyone in our lives before they vote. This means talking to our entire family, even people who find themselves difficult to talk to; and the people we work with, even when it isn’t at all times comfortable to speak about it; and our friends and neighbors whom we see on the salon or barbershop, during school pickup, at church, or on the last picnics of the season, or anywhere else. Everyone we can talk to, we need to talk to.

But how will we get there?

#1 – Volunteering. Resources like voting.org, Black voters matter and Color Change Voting Being Black provides tools to assist you to talk to Black voters across the country — ensuring they’re ready and able to vote.

On these sites you can check your voting registration and be sure that you have not been faraway from the voter rolls by right-wing Republicans. You can use them to help family and friends do the identical. You can also enroll to volunteer – alone or with a bunch of friends – to do what matters most in the ultimate weeks of the election: texting other black voters, calling voters, donating to… voting programs, neighborhood walks door-to-door, organizing events to motivate more people to vote, and more.

#2 – Talk to people you already know. This can be difficult – talking to friends who may not yet agree with you. Someone may inform you, “I’m not involved in politics.” But you have to tell them: “If you don’t take care of politics, politics will take care of you. And if you realize that after the November 5 election, it will be too late.”

Sometimes it’s about saying the one thing they can’t ignore: the one thing they can’t deny that makes the election alternative and its urgency seem so real. For example,

Donald Trump executed more imprisoned black men than the federal government has killed in a long time. He wanted to look tough and Black people paid the value. Harris and Biden stopped it. But Trump will surely start it once again on day one. This is because Trump only cares about his popularity with the loudest white supremacists, not people like us.

Sometimes it’s about talking in regards to the reality we will all have to live with if we let Trump back in. In 2016 hate crimes increased by over 200% in places where Trump held campaign rallies. And after taking on the White House, they will rise even higher. Now he is gathering all this hateful energy against Haitians, leading to: over 30 bomb threats in schools, government buildings and officials’ homes where he told his mob to aim: Springfield, Ohio. This level of anti-blackness will not end with Haitians. We are all a part of the group of Black folks that he will order his mob to attack. And if he is within the White House, he will attack us: he will tell his Justice Department and the police to attack us by entering our neighborhoods, and he will tell his IRS and Social Security to attack us by canceling our advantages, and who knows what next.

Sometimes it’s about being clear and sober about Kamala Harris. She will give us an incredible opportunity to move ourselves and this country forward, even when she can’t do the whole lot for us, especially if a Republican Congress stands in her way – as they did with Obama. But it will move the Government forward in delivering what we need and deserve by way of health and childcare and the fight against discrimination. He will pursue economic opportunities for us. And like Obama, sometimes we’ll have to push her. The difference is that when Black people push a Democrat like Obama or Harris, we can move them. I used to be involved in this under Obama, and we won so much – especially in health care. But we cannot have any illusions in regards to the situation under Trump: we will never find a way to put pressure on Trump. We have no probability with him.

And this is one other issue: talking about Trump’s plans for us.

You may have heard of Project 2025. But what is it? This is Trump’s program plan, which might expand executive power – similar to a dictatorship – and hand over your entire decision-making process in the federal government to right-wing extremists. We all know who they’re and what they do.

Project 2025 features a plan to eliminate job protections for 1000’s of presidency staff and replace them with people loyal to Trump. Black staff create over 18% workforce on the federal level, so this is a direct threat: we have been kicked out of the federal government and will probably be the primary to leave. Project 2025 also plans to destroy the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides money to low-income people to buy food. They will attack diversity programs across the country. One results of this is an enormous shortage of black doctors. The scope of negative impacts on Black people is countless. You can see me speak about it here. You can read more here.

Sometimes we see people forget what happened when Trump was the last president, and we need to remind them of that. When Trump left office, the black unemployment rate was over 9%and the Covid pandemic, which he and his administration downplayed and allowed to spread, has resulted within the disproportionate death of Black Americans, at twice the speed of white Americans. The Trump administration halted consent decrees that finally began to regulate corrupt and racist police departments and halted Justice Department investigations into violent police departments. Trump appointed essentially the most Court of Appeals judges in a long time –none of them were Black– and appointed three Supreme Court justices who ended Affirmative Action, abortion rights, and more.

Vice President Kamala Harris has proven achievements working with President Biden to create record numbers of jobs, keep unemployment low, improve maternal care, solid the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, and far more.

Our work in the approaching weeks will not be easy. However, we need to talk to people. And we can’t leave anyone behind. As you saw within the Paint the Polls Black series, hosted by Global Black Economic Forum and with the support of Essence, we must make sure the exchange of data, dispel myths and mobilize to vote. If you have not seen the series, you can watch all of the content on YouTube.

No matter what anyone cares about – climate change, discrimination within the workplace and employment, quality education and health care, reproductive health care, inexpensive housing, criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ rights, stopping corporations that cheat us with fines and costs at every step – we have to show them that what they care about most will be within the November elections: either they will get it (or they will have a probability to get it with Harris), or they definitely won’t get it with Trump – and in truth, the whole lot will worsen. Our job is to be sure that people know.

We can do this.

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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