Alison Lex, MD
I was 38 years old and a newly graduated doctor when my mother was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma. Five years later, I passed my boards, and ordered my own mammogram for my birthday. When that showed areas of concern, I ordered my own MRI. A biopsy then confirmed it: cancer.
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Ann L. Perry
My internist paused during the routine physical on February 18, 2000. "Did you know you have a lump?" she asked. Her voice was a little too loud, a little too sharp, and she turned her head away so I couldn't see her face.
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Debbie
I am a mother of two young children. I had breast pain near the end of my cycle, and called the Ob/Gyn. (The pain was so bad it would hurt just going down the steps.)
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Sharon
In mid-June of 2002 I went for my annual mammogram. I expected it to be just routine…
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Lynn
We never think we will hear the words, "I am 95% certain you have breast cancer."
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Monica Anderson
I am a 31-year-old, single, African-American female with what I understood as no family history of cancer until I was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after New Years.
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Shanna Werner
I was a sporadic monthly self-examiner. With all the fibrocystic tissue in my breast I felt I would never find anything except the "tootsie roll" like apparitions located there.
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Kim Bowerman
Shortly before I turned 35, I began to make plans for my first yearly mammogram. My mother is a survivor, having been diagnosed at 37 herself.
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Kris Lavario
I was scheduled for my first mammogram in December 1999 but I decided not to go because my breasts were painful. Three months later I found out I was pregnant.
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Lori Kennedy
In October 2000 I gave birth to my first child. In July 2001 I went to my Ob/Gyn for my six-month post-partum checkup, and because my left breast was leaking a brown discharge…
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Lynn Nishimura-Zelske
I was diagnosed at age 24 with DCIS…
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Laura Lawson
It was spring of 1991 when I found a lump in my left breast. I went to my doctor and he told me not to worry about it. I remember asking him, "Are you sure? Shouldn't I go and see a surgeon?" He said that given my age and the fact that there was no history of breast cancer in the family that I shouldn't worry. So I didn't.
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Roberta Humphreys
Today, May 8, 2002, my oncologist smiled and showed me the door and told me I was too healthy to be allowed to stay. Regular check-ups only from now on.
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Annis Karpenko
June 15, 1990: The telephone rings and it is my surgeon. The needle biopsy he had done earlier in the week has come back "red flagged." Although we had planned to remove what he thought was a fibroidadenoma in August, he was now booking me for surgery in four days. I was to report to his office the next day for pre-op orders to take to the hospital. When I hung up the phone, I was sitting on the floor, and I wasn't sure how I got there.
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Denise Davis
I've been online, reading the many stories from survivors of all ages and walks of life. I, too, am a survivor of breast cancer. I was diagnosed in November 2001; had a lumpectomy and then a mastectomy in December 2001; began four months of heavy chemotherapy in January 2002; had 33 treatments of radiation that ended in June 2002; and now will take tamoxifen for five years.
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Gail Cleveland
No one wants to be a statistic, but sooner or later we all become one, in one form or another, whether we like it or not. However, not all statistics turn out to be so bad—and herein lies the tale of a very good statistic.
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Ginny Mason RN, BSN
I remember the day clearly. I was sitting at a large table in a small conference room, waiting for the surgeon to come and talk to me. He had done a needle aspiration of a "cyst" in my breast the previous day.
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Kim
I'm a 32-year-old woman with no family history of breast cancer. I actually have a family history that is remarkably cancer-free.
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Melanie
Has it really been eleven years since I found the lump in my breast? And here I am, still alive!
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Michelle
I was diagnosed with stage IIB breast cancer at the age of 32. After my surgery I found out that I had 20 positive lymph nodes out of 20 tested. What a big blow that was. I was just getting used to the idea I had breast cancer to begin with, now my doctor was telling me how sorry he was.
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Nancy Lee Kreisler
I was a former Powers model and have been in a wheelchair 46 years (never stood during this time) of my 52 happy years of marriage.
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Paula Montanez
I never thought I would get breast cancer. It did not run in my family, I was relatively young—41 years old—and healthy. My mammogram the previous year had been negative. But, unfortunately, the next year it was positive for cancer.
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Diana Rivers
Breast cancer colored my entire development as a woman. When my mother was diagnosed with the disease in the 1970s, she was forty-six and I was a young teenager trying to form my own identity.
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Sharon
I had my annual mammogram in February 2001, right before we left for a show. We do photography on location at art shows around the country as well as in the studio. The next day I was told I would need to have another mammogram and, since I was going to be gone about two weeks, they took me right in—which always makes you nervous.
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Laura Millisor
At 45 life was grand. My husband and I had adopted a little girl from Ukraine and we couldn't have been happier. Alexandra (Ali) was one when we brought her home from a dreary orphanage in Ukraine. When she was about to turn three, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
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