BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — The Susan G. Komen Foundation estimates nearly 290,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year alone. Early detection and advocacy are key in saving the lives of those living with the disease.

One breast cancer survivor is trying to make the process as simple as opening an app on your phone.

“The practitioner that had examined me in the spring of 2018, she had found a lump in my breast, but she didn’t bother to tell me about it because she thought I was too young to get breast cancer,” explained 37-year-old, Jessica Baladad.

If it wasn’t for her own self-exam in the shower a couple of weeks later, she would not have known she was living with cancer until it was too late.

“I had just had a clinical exam; do I really need to do my self-exam? And I thought ‘I better stay in the habit, stay in a routine. I need to go ahead and do it.”

Baladad said she’s been doing self-exams since college. She became the fourth generation of her family to have the disease.

“Thinking about my family members who fought before me and knowing that I was going to finish the battle that started with them,” she recalls of her journey.

Her road to recovery included 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and 24 rounds of radiation. She shared the stark realities of her cancer battle on social media.

It was then that she realized a startling truth.

“Women aren’t doing self-exams because they didn’t know how. They were afraid of their bodies, and they didn’t feel comfortable," she said.

So, she created “Feel for Your Life.” It first began as a social project and then became a free app.

“I wanted to show women how to do self-breast exams, how to get in touch with a doctor, how to advocate for themselves medically and get the care that they needed.”

The app has been downloaded tens of thousands of times since its launch in August 2021.

“I have women reach out to me every week through messages and the app saying ‘Hey, I got my first mammogram because of you.’ ‘Hey, I just got tested genetically because of what I learned on your app” she notes.

Baladad isn’t done yet. She plans to expand the app, hoping no one ever will have a missed diagnosis again.

“Throughout my journey, I just asked God. ‘Use me through this,'" she said.

Baladad hopes to eventually add a telehealth component to the “Feel for Your Life” app. She is also working on legislation in her home state of Tennessee to require all middle school and high school students to learn about how to conduct self-exams.