October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an observance designed to help inform and encourage women to pay attention to their body’s health. Army Col. Jana Nohrenberg, the chief nursing officer for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, shares her personal story of surviving breast cancer.
Video by Spc. Catessa Palone
Transcript
Army Col. Jana Nohrenberg: After a brigade run at Fort Hood, I was in the shower and I felt a lump. Somehow I knew, like just in the pit of my stomach, I knew that it was cancer. Even though I guess the smart part of my brain said not all lumps mean cancer, there was just something about it that I knew. Instead of crying, I went into the kitchen and told my husband what I had found. You know, I never thought that I would be a cancer patient, but it has changed how I look at the world and how I address people and how I look at problems. And just my approach in general to life is a little bit different now that I have gone through that journey. So I think just having walked that walk and I know that that place of fear and panic that women feel when they first get diagnosed, or even when they first feel a lump, even before they know it is or is not cancer, you know you can just be a support person and listen to their story. Just to be able to be there and say, “Look, I made it through, you can, too. Be strong.”