HOUSTON — Life looks a little different for Michelle Smith after she made the choice to determine her future rather than let the future decide her fate.
"A breast cancer previvor is someone who elects to have a prophylactic bilateral double mastectomy before diagnosis," she explained.
Smith is a breast cancer previvor. Her grandmother died from the disease and her mother has survived it twice. Now, as a mother herself, Smith learned that her risk of developing breast cancer was high.
She said that after many conversations with God - and a year and a half later - she made peace with a difficult decision.
"I took out all my breast tissue in advance because my risk factor of getting breast cancer was extremely high," Smith said.
She needed two surgeries to complete the prophylactic bilateral double mastectomy.
"The first surgery was to spare my nipples. So that's another thing that is not widely talked about, but in the breast cancer community, it's common," she explained.
Once a patient is diagnosed with breast cancer, the nipples must be removed to prevent the cancer from spreading. The same goes for the lymph nodes, which Smith also kept.
"The second surgery, which was the true mastectomy, in which they took out all my breast tissue," she said.
She said it took her about six weeks to start feeling OK after the second surgery.
"When you have bilateral double mastectomy, you lose the feeling in your breast. They have taken out all your nerve endings," Smith said.
She explained that the doctors removed any area where cancer would be able to build up in her chest.
"I'm OK with that because it saved my life," she explained.
After testing the breast tissue that was removed, Smith's oncologist found a massive amount of precancerous cells hiding in a milk duct.
"When it's hiding in a milk duct, that means it can grow and grow and then by the time it comes to surface, you're already about stage 3," she said.
Her oncologist said Smith made the right decision at the right time.
"I'll take all the scars, my incision scars, all of that!" Smith said. "And I'd do it again to know that it saved my life."