People Are Sharing This Viral Photo Of Lemons To Help Women Detect Breast Cancer

Cancer sucks. Everyone in the world can pretty much agree on that point. And although doctors all over the globe disagree on which cancer treatments are the most effective, all of them can agree that early screenings give those afflicted with cancer the best shot at fighting their illness.

And this viral photo is being shared like crazy for that exact reason.

This photo of 12 lemons shows all of the warning signs of breast cancer and all the different ways it can feel. 

Shared by Erin Smith Chieze in a touching Facebook post that details how a single picture helped her realize that she had breast cancer, and saved her life in the process.

In the past few days, I have received quite a few private messages about a "game" going around where you post a heart, then you are secretly supposed to state it is for breast cancer awareness. This is my response to all of these messages.

Someone once posted a picture on Facebook of what breast cancer can look like. Not feel, but look like. In December of 2015 when I saw an indentation that looked like one of those pictures, I instantly knew I had breast cancer. I tried to feel for a tumor, but my tumor was non palpable. I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 days later and with stage 4 the following month. A heart did nothing for awareness. I knew what breast cancer was. I knew all about self exams, but a picture of what to look for keyed me into knowing I had a terminal disease. We need to give REAL information, not cute hearts. Without having seen a picture randomly with real information, I wouldn't have known what to look for. Do us a favor, stop playing games with my life and start truly helping people. Metastatic breast cancer treatment research and real awareness.

This is a photo I have found that is very similar to the one I originally saw. PLEASE, stop playing games that do not actually promote awareness, they often cause people to tune out anything that might even mention the word awareness. So if you truly want to help people WITH cancer, or those who will GET cancer, share photos like this one. I wish I remembered who posted the original picture I saw, it truly did make a difference for me.