Jamil Rivers remembers her exhaustion when she first began treatment for metastatic breast cancer six years ago. At the time, she was raising three boys and working full-time as she underwent chemotherapy.
“I just kept pushing through,” she says. One day, she came home from treatment with fatigue written on her face. “I was so beaten down that blinking and breathing was difficult,” says Rivers, 46. “I could see the concern in the kids’ eyes.”
Rivers, a vice president of finance who lives with her boys (now 23, 13, and 11) in Philadelphia, knew she had to find a better way to take care of herself and her family. “I didn’t want them to have that memory,” she says.
So she began prioritizing her care by getting acupuncture and massage. She connected to nonprofits that could provide support, like giving her rides to and from chemo and providing resources to help explain cancer to …