Feel For Your Life

We were so elated by the number of applications we received for our 2023 Mona Lisa Scholarship Program. We read story after story of women who are the true risk takers and change makers of Nashville. When we received the application from a spunky, determined woman out of Clarkesville named Jessica, we just knew that we had met our 2023 Mona Lisa.

Jessica Baladad is a 4-year cancer survivor who became a passionate advocate after a practitioner dismissed a malignant lump in her breast during a clinical exam.

Thankfully, Jessica learned how to do a self breast exam after having a benign tumor removed while she was in college, and it was a routine she maintained throughout adulthood. Two weeks after her clinical appointment, Jessica was doing a self exam in the shower when she found a lump, the same lump her practitioner failed to tell her about and documented as “normal.”

Jessica was later diagnosed with Stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma. She underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, 24 rounds of radiation, a hysterectomy and a 10-hour flap reconstruction.

She started Feel For Your Life as a social media outreach project to encourage women to be their breast health advocates, and in 2021, Jessica became the first breast cancer survivor to create an app that provides resources for doing self breast exams and getting screened, allows users to track and monitor their changes, and lets users set reminders for doing self exams.

Since launching the app, she’s helped write legislation in the State of Tennessee to promote risk-reducing measures against cancer and disease. Billed as the Feel For Your Life Act, it requires high school students to learn about self breast exams, testicular exams and skin exams.

In 2022, Jessica created The BREAST Method, an online module created to teach other advocates her tips, tricks and secrets for negotiating medical bills, disputing insurance denials and navigating the American healthcare system.