When Chien-Chi Huang of Somerville received her diagnosis of breast cancer in

When Chien-Chi Huang of Somerville received her diagnosis of breast cancer in early June 2005, she said it felt like she had failed an important exam.

At the time, she was a 40-year-old independent video producer from Taiwan, and a married mother of two. She said she thought breast cancer was a disease she would never have to fight.

Because the subject is not spoken of in Asian culture, Huang believed cancer rarely affected women like herself.

Feelings of failure and shock haunted Huang, now 45, throughout her recovery. No other Asian women she knew had ever had breast cancer. Only later did she learn that her culture’s “code of silence” prevented women she knew from speaking about their cancer.

“I ate well, I exercised, I had stress – but who doesn’t?” said Huang. “I asked the question everyone asks, why me?”

Her symptoms began with a rash across her checks that she thought was a sunburn from standing outside at her son’s soccer practice. Tests for Lupus and Rosacea conducted by her dermatologist came back negative. Then her fingers swelled and her cuticles became inflamed. Another trip to the dermatologist still revealed nothing. Only when Huang developed flu-like symptoms and felt a lump under her arm, did she visit her general physician.

That’s when the cancer was discovered.

The doctor diagnosed her with Triple Negative Breast Cancer, an aggressive form of cancer with a low rate of reoccurrence after five years in remission.

What followed – eight months of paranoia from the medications, physical exhaustion, and depression – left her isolated from her family and friends.

“The most difficult thing,” said Huang of her recovery, “was not losing my hair, my breasts, or my life, but losing my mind.”

“What got me out of that deep, dark hole I was in, were the people I came in contact with at the Newton Wellness Center,” said Huang. “Some of them had it much worse than me, and I realized I had to stop looking inward and look outward.”

In the weeks and months of her recovery, she learned of other Asian-American people who had also survived breast cancer, but kept silent. Huang explained that many Asian women believe an illness, such as cancer, is their cross to bear.

Even her own aunt, who emigrated from Taiwan to Hawaii, died of breast cancer because she refused surgery.

Huang said in 2010 she launched the Asian Breast Cancer Project in Massachusetts to “break the silence.”

“Stigma, shame, and misinformation prevent people from seeking treatment and support,” she wrote in the organization’s informational pamphlet

Workshops organized by the project aim to overcome struggles with limited health care resources, along with linguistic and cultural barriers in Boston’s Asian-immigrant communities. Huang’s goal with the project is to create a survivor network, cultural competency training for health care workers, and breast cancer education in different languages.

So far this year, Huang has organized four workshops, and has more in the works.

Looking back on her recovery, Huang said she now realizes that helping these women was the best way to help herself.

Read more: http://www.tauntongazette.com/archive/x1213116194/Somerville-resident-starts-breast-cancer-program-for-Asian-women#ixzz1a7x1gQTL