ABC News’ Amy Robach Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis

I remember exactly where I was when I got the call from a “Good Morning America” producer. I was about to interview Marie Monville, the wife of the Amish school shooter, in the bucolic setting of Lancaster, Pa. She was speaking out about the senseless horror that happened in the most unlikely of places.

I was focused on what was about to be an emotional interview regarding life after tragedy, when our producer asked me if she could make a sensitive request: “Amy, next week we’d like you to do the first ever live television mammogram for ‘GMA’ Goes Pink day. You’re 40, the age women should start getting mammograms. Would you even consider it?”

It felt like a strange thing to consider given where I was and what I was about to do, but oddly now, it all feels connected.

For the past 20 years, sadly, a large part of my job deals in tragedy — other peoples’ tragedies — but never my own.

That day, when I was asked to do something I really didn’t want to do, something I had put off for more than a year, I had no way of knowing that I was in a life-or-death situation.

Sitting in that kitchen with Marie Monville, I had cancer and didn’t know it. In fact, I would have considered it virtually impossible that I would have cancer. I work out, I eat right, I take care of myself and I have very little family history; in fact, all of my grandparents are still alive.

So in the days to follow, if several producers and even Robin Roberts herself hadn’t convinced me that doing this on live television would save lives, I would never have been able to save my own.

So on Oct. 1, I had my first mammogram, in front of millions of people.

After breathing a big sigh of relief once it was done, my breath was taken away only a few weeks later.

I thought I was going back in for a few follow-up images, only to find out in a matter of hours that I had breast cancer.

I was alone that afternoon, never thinking to bring anyone with me, never thinking that day would be life-altering. My husband was on a business trip and my parents live across the country, but that night everyone flew into New York City and we started gearing up for a fight.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, I will go into surgery where my doctors will perform a bilateral mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery. Only then will I know more about what that fight will fully entail, but I am mentally and physically as prepared as anyone can be in this situation.

And while everyone who gets cancer is clearly unlucky, I got lucky by catching it early, and there are so many people to thank for making sure I did. Every producer, every person who urged me to do this, changed my trajectory.

The doctors told me bluntly: “That mammogram just saved your life.”

I was also told this, for every person who has cancer, at least 15 lives are saved because people around them become vigilant. They go to their doctors, they get checked.

I can only hope my story will do the same and inspire every woman who hears it to get a mammogram, to take a self exam. No excuses. It is the difference between life and death.

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My Breast Cancer Online Friends Get Me

I’m in Las Vegas, and I’ve lost my breast. To be completely truthful, it isn’t my real breast. It’s a prosthetic (hand crocheted and stuffed with wool) that is filling in for my absent left one. I’m here with 14 other women, all members of an online cancer support group. We’re here, and we’re flouting warnings about meeting strangers from the Internet.

I don’t remember when the idea of Vegas first floated through the ether, but it became something we would say when things got bad. “We’ll meet in Vegas next year” became this crucial glimmer, an affirmation that yes, there will be a next year, and yes, it will be better.

The villa we’ve rented is cream stucco, and sidles up to a mountain to the east. There is a swimming pool with rocks and lights and palm trees and a water slide, and it’s lush and green. Our expanse of sky is blue and cloudless. When I peer over the fence, the surroundings are arid and rocky. It’s a true oasis, in the middle of a hell of a lot of desert.

We had started out online as usernames and collections of diagnoses and treatments, reporting timelines of our hair loss, and other side effects. At the risk of stating the obvious, chemo is hard. Physically, yes, but even more so, emotionally. I plodded along for most of the autumn, chiming in with the group here and there, sharing things I’d learned. Over time, it became easy to send things out into our snug little corner of the vast virtual world.

Toward the end of my chemo regimen, a couple of weeks after superstorm Sandy, I had something of a breakdown. I had reported an innocuous seeming symptom to my oncologist, which concerned her enough to send me to a neurologist. She got me an appointment for a few days later.

I woke up the next morning full of dread. I sobbed into my pillow while my husband tried to comfort me. There was nothing to do but wait, so I vowed to stay in bed. I refused to walk around and eat breakfast and buy groceries as if nothing were happening. It made sense to me, but my husband didn’t get it.

“It feels like you’re giving up,” he said. I lay in bed, curtains drawn, with my dog and a mountain of crumpled tissues. I cried more, and watched a lot of bad TV, and around 3 p.m. wondered if I was going crazy. I logged onto the message board on my phone. I tapped out a message, an SOS, and sent it out of my darkened bedroom and into a blue-white world made of millions of pixels. My message traveled into outer space and back again, while I turned my pillow over, looking for the cool side. Replies trickled in, some commiserating, some offering practical advice, some affirmation. They told me to take care of myself, whatever that meant in that moment.

And when, a few days later, the neurologist put my fears to rest, my group cheered right along with me. I felt supported, in the truest sense of the word. I lost my prosthetic breast on the second day of the Vegas trip. I had been taking it out to sleep and to swim, and somewhere during all that in and out, it disappeared. After a quick, fruitless search, I join a few of the women on a visit to Red Rock Canyon. We take a short hike, helping each other on the rocks when we need it. In the afternoon, I go with another group to the Atomic Testing Museum, where we pose for goofy pictures with a Geiger counter wand positioned over our radiation-burned chests.

Here’s the thing: When you have cancer it becomes your whole world. It informs my experiences as much as the fact that I grew up in New Jersey or went to college or have a dog. Yet I rarely speak aloud about it. To be able to spend four days talking about this experience freely, as often as it popped into my head (I think about breast cancer probably about as often as an adolescent boy thinks about breasts), was a gift.

The future for all of us is uncertain, a mix of statistics, hopes and hunches. But whatever it holds, we have existed in this place together. There is a surrealness to transforming virtual space into real space — and what better locale than Las Vegas, that weird imitation of life. Each of us materialize, seemingly from nowhere, all of us in these transitional moments: finishing treatment, growing out our hair, in various stages of reconstruction. Being together is exquisite, and temporal.

Flying home, the sun sets behind me. Soon the stars are visible, and the night cozies around the plane. I could have stayed a week, a year. The world outside had ceased to exist at times. There was just that pool, and our voices and the sky. I couldn’t tell you what they all did for a living or their children’s names or where they went to high school. But I could tell you what they thought about when they couldn’t sleep at night. I could tell you what would make them laugh in the emergency room. I could tell you what they needed in their darkest moments, because, in all likelihood, I was needing the same thing.

I think of my lost breast, and how at home, on my way to work, I would sometimes panic that I forgot it, and clutch at my chest till I felt its familiar mushiness. But in Vegas, I went hiking, to museums, to restaurants, without it, and was fine. Later, once I’m home and folding laundry, I will find it again. It will have accidentally gone through the washer and dryer, and the wool inside will have turned into felt.

The plane banks, and my window, which had been full of stars, is suddenly filled with the ground below. The lights from houses and cars twinkle against velvety blackness, and if I soften my eyes I can’t tell the difference between the earth and the sky. Emily Helck is a 29-year-old artist from Jersey City, N.J. When she began chemotherapy in September 2012, she started her blog, “Real Tumors of New Jersey.”  She posted a video containing a year of self portraits to her blog on Sept. 29, which has since gone viral. “A Day in the Life” is a series of blogs written by people who are living with medical conditions.

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Increased Options for Older Breast Cancer Patients

The purpose of the CALGB 9343 study was to determine whether there is a benefit to adjuvant radiation therapy after breast-conserving therapy for a population of older women with small ER-positive breast cancers who will be treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy for 5 years.

Women over the age of 70 years with early ER-positive invasive breast cancer (tumor measuring no more than 2 cm) and clinically negative axillae were enrolled between 1994 and 1999. A total of 636 participants with stage I breast cancer who were all treated with lumpectomy (auxiliary exploration was left to the discretion of the treating surgeon) were randomly assigned to receive tamoxifen plus radiation therapy or tamoxifen alone. Primary endpoints were time to local or regional recurrence, frequency of mastectomy, breast cancer-specific survival, time to distant metastasis, and overall survival.

After a median follow-up of 12.6 years, investigators found no significant differences in time to mastectomy, time to distant recurrence, breast cancer-specific survival, or overall survival. At 10 years, 98% of patients who received dual-modality therapy were free from loco regional recurrence as compared with 90% in the group treated with tamoxifen alone. In the group that received tamoxifen alone, 42 of 319 women relapsed, compared with 23 of 317 in the group that received tamoxifen plus radiation therapy. More women in the tamoxifen group had local and regional relapses and were treated with surgery or radiation at the time of relapse. There was no significant difference in the number of distant relapses between the 2 treatment groups.

After long-term follow-up, there remains a benefit in terms of reduction of local recurrence for patients receiving tamoxifen plus radiation therapy. This does not translate into a survival advantage, however, and does not affect the rate of distant metastases. These findings allow physicians and patients a legitimate option to minimize treatment at the time of breast cancer diagnosis

Viewpoint

CALGB 9343 is a now a mature study and confirms the earlier findings[1] that endocrine therapy alone after breast conservation is a reasonable option for women over the age of 70 with small, node-negative, ER-positive tumors. Hughes and colleagues' study has influenced treatment guidelines and ought to be discussed with patients who would have met the entry criteria for this randomized controlled trial.[2] The study results do not reassure us of the safety of this minimalist approach for women with biologically aggressive tumors such as those with concomitant over expression of HER2. In an accompanying editorial by Smith and Buchholz,[3] we are reminded of the importance of considering other pertinent factors, such as the patient's life expectancy, co morbid illnesses, and tumor-specific criteria (e.g., grade, presence of lymph vascular invasion, and margin assessment).

As we reflect on the implications of this landmark study on practice, we need to consider the likelihood of whether an individual patient will actually adhere to a recommendation for lengthy endocrine treatment (the Hughes study assumes that women will take 5 years of tamoxifen), which is associated with cost and side effects. Another consideration is that we now have newer, more convenient strategies to deliver radiation using abbreviated and "personalized" schedules than were available when the Hughes study began, and these options make it easier for older women to bear radiation therapy. For women 70 years of age who are fit and have a life expectancy of 10 years or more, an appropriate approach may be an abbreviated schedule of radiation and adjuvant endocrine therapy. Clearly, we now have more breast cancer treatment options for older patients, and our challenge is to apply the available evidence wisely to best meet the needs of each individual patient.

About the Company-
Southlake Oncology is a well-established, reputable medical oncology colon & breast cancer treatment center in north Texas. They also offer nutritional evaluations, a cancer support/education center for patients and family members, and an onsite American Cancer Society resource office. They are dedicated in providing the metroplex with convenient, state-of-the art cancer treatment technology in a professional yet comforting environment.

Contact us:-
Rheta Mankin
Administrator
(817) 416-0202
Website - http://www.southlakeoncology.com/

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Susan G. Komen Orange County price inspiring women at lunch for breast health Contributions

Susan G. Komen Orange County (http://www.komenoc.org) recognized three members of the exceptional community to its annual celebration of survivor and lunch at the main centre Oasis at Corona del Mar on Sunday. Outstanding individuals were honored for their valuable contribution to the breast cancer community and their commitment to the Komen promise to save lives and ending breast forever. Sandra Hutchens, Orange County Sheriff-Coroner and survivor of breast cancer, gave the keynote address.

"These incredible women possess the dedication, compassion and strength that help Komen Orange County provide vital breast health programs and raise funds for the ground-breaking research," said Lisa Wolter, Executive Director, Komen Orange County. "Komen is proud to honor extraordinary Community individuals who lead the charge to promote breast health education and energizing science for healing, and we are especially privileged to welcome Hutchens Sheriff-Coroner for headlining of this special day of recognition. ''

Hutchens has been diagnosed with cancer of the breast of stage III last November, but they have caught the disease early. It is still under radiation.

"I was lucky enough to discover a lump through self-examination. The cancer was caught early on, "said Hutchens. "Komen Orange County is in the community where we work and where we shop, spreading the message of early and the poorest detection providing resources for the health services of the bass - or toll-free breast."

The winners of 2013 are as follows:

Georganna Hall Wadsack, recipient of the award for most inspirational Breast Cancer Survivor:

Huntington Beach resident Georganna Hall Wadsack was diagnosed with the breast cancer stage II in 2011 at the age of 38 and recently completed treatment.  A single mother at the time no Medicare, Wadsack has discovered that she had the disease through a mammogram after the County of Orange Komen-funded be turned away from two other doctors. Komen Orange County applied for a grant to cover the cost of its diagnosis of breast cancer health services and has also provided emotional support to Wadsack who credits Komen to save his life. She told her story in the race last year for the Cure survivor tribute and is an active, involved and volunteer to Stand Up for the annual Cure, a fundraiser that raised $ 100,000 year last for Komen Orange County.

Angela Acevedo, health breast remarkable advocate of the recipient of the award:

Angela Acevedo, a browser of nursing at the hospital Saint-Joseph in Orange, goes beyond his job to ensure that all women are informed, the power and have access to breast health services. Acevedo is an active member of Unidos Contra el Seno de Cancer Coalition and volunteers in most of the events of community awareness of Komen, including its partnership with Northgate Gonzalez markets of Komen. She also serves on breast tissue bank Committee Director for Komen Orange County, who will bring a gift of tissue (http://www.komenoc.org/site/c.dkIXJcNNKlLaG/b.8645275/k.B...) Bank drive to Orange County November 2 - the first fabric collection drive which was held on the West Coast. As part of the effort, Acevedo has donated her own breast tissue to a car in Indiana earlier this year and now shares his first hand experience with others in the community to encourage participation in the upcoming drive.

Melissa McGee, more inspiring Co-Survivor award:

Melissa McGee of Aliso Viejo has been affected by breast cancer four separate times. Her mother was diagnosed in 1991 and McGee was its guardian through recovery. She has also seen a close friend fight cancer breast twice before succumbing to the disease. Today, McGee takes care of her best friend who is subjected to chemotherapy before breast surgery and radiation. McGee is the creator of 'Garden of Susan', the iconic posters of survivors and the co-survivors adorning the finish line every race of Orange County Komen for the Cure (http://www.komenoc.org/race) and a source of inspiration and hope to all participants. McGee creates each poster and blocks all the signs before the participants arrive the day of the race.          

About Komen ®
Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Suzy, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer. Today, komen ® works at the end of cancer in the United States and around the world by investing more than 790 million $ in research on breast cancer and 1.5 billion $ in programs of community outreach over the last 30 years. provide funds to assist women in low-income and uninsured get screened and get treatment; advocating for programs of research and cancer radiation; and working worldwide in more than 30 countries. Visit komen.org. Connect with us on Facebook (http://www.komen.org/facebook) and Twitter (http://www.komen.org/twitter).

For more information about Susan G. Komen Orange County, visit www.komenoc.org or call 714-957-9157.

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Young Women With Breast Cancer Opting For Mastectomy

Most women diagnosed with breast cancer when they're 40 or younger are choosing mastectomy rather than more limited and breast-conserving lumpectomy plus radiation, a study of women in Massachusetts finds. Moreover, most of those choosing mastectomy elect to have the other, noncancerous breast removed, too. These findings will be presented Monday at the American Society Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago.

The research involved 227 Massachusetts women and may not be nationally representative. But study authors say it's in line with other studies suggesting that many of today's breast cancer patients are choosing mastectomy. Sixty-two percent of women 40 and younger in this study opted for mastectomy. One in seven breast cancer patients falls in this age group.

That's in sharp contrast to their mothers' generation, which saw the rise of lumpectomies in reaction to a belief that mastectomies were unnecessarily traumatic and disfiguring — and mounting evidence that lumpectomies resulted in equivalent survival. The new research also documents a growing trend toward prophylactic mastectomy — removal of a noncancerous breast after discovering breast cancer in the other one.

In 1998, fewer than 2 percent of women with breast cancer chose this option. In the new study, 37 percent chose prophylactic mastectomy in the non-cancerous breast. And, considering just women who chose mastectomy at all, more than 60 percent had prophylactic removal of the noncancerous breast. All the women in the study had been diagnosed with stage I, II and II breast cancer. The study did not look at women with a so-called stage-zero condition called DCIS, short for ductal carcinoma in situ. The study also didn't include women breast cancer affected both breasts or had metastasized to other organs.

"There's no difference in survival" between mastectomy and lumpectomy among women with stage I, II or III breast cancer," study author Shoshana Rosenberg tells Shots. "These are women who had a choice, and 62 percent chose mastectomy." She and her colleagues at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and other institutions are trying to understand why. Some of the reasons they uncovered are clear and supported by data. Others are less so.

For instance, women who have a mutation in one of the genes called BRCA were much more likely to choose mastectomy or double mastectomy. That fits with evidence that they have a very high lifetime risk of cancer recurrence. But women who had a mother or sister with breast cancer were no more likely to choose mastectomy. Rosenbergsays the study didn't find younger women choosing lumpectomy because of concerns about body image. "You would expect that to bias them toward breast-conserving surgery," she says. But clearly, among women in this study, that's not the case.

"From our perspective, the most interesting finding is that role that anxiety plays in the decision,"Rosenberg says. Women who scored high on a standard test for anxiety were more likely to choose mastectomy. This makes her worry that women anxious about the best choice "are not necessarily contextualizing their true risk – not understanding or not knowing – because there's no difference in survival, so it really shouldn't make a difference which surgery to choose."

Another clue to whether women are aware of the survival data: Those who say they made the decision themselves, rather than sharing the decision with their doctor, were more likely to choose mastectomy. "If they're making this decision on their own, it's hard to really know if they know all the facts and interpreting the risks accurately,"Rosenberg says. "We've done some other research indicating that women overestimate their risks" of cancer recurrence or death.

The study also finds that women were more likely to choose mastectomy if they had a tumor that's Her2-positive, if their cancer had spread to nearby lymph nodes, if they had two or more children, and if they were leaner. That last factor probably reflects the fact that some heavier women aren't good candidates for breast reconstruction surgery, so they're more likely to choose lumpectomy. But the study doesn't answer other questions about mastectomy-vs.-lumpectomy that may factor into many women's decisions.

For instance, some women may be concerned that they'll get a poorer cosmetic result from lumpectomy and radiation than from mastectomy followed by reconstruction. The study doesn't address that, or concern about the side-effects or burden of weeks-long radiation treatments that usually follow lumpectomy. The study also doesn't address economic issues — such as the cost of one procedure versus another, or whether it makes a difference if women have insurance coverage.

Rosenberg says the point isn't to question whether many younger women who choose mastectomy are misguided. "It's a high rate of mastectomy, but we're not trying to say women who choose mastectomy are making a bad decision," she says. "We just want to make sure it's an informed decision. You want to make sure the patient understands the benefits and harms of each option."

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Lauren Cahn: Breasts: What's Really Wrong With Breast Cancer

What is it about breast cancer? What makes it so disgusting on the one hand, and yet so compelling on the other? Why is it so difficult for a woman to tell a man that she's had breast cancer -- without blushing? Why is it so difficult to tell anyone that you've had breast cancer without feeling as if you've given away some portion of power, however impossible to measure?

I'm here to tell you: Breast cancer is about breasts. "Really?" you say, "I'd never have guessed." Well, put away the "scoff" emoticon for a moment and consider what that really means. Think about breasts. Breasts. Is there a female body part with which our society is more obsessed than breasts? Is there any obsession so equally matched by inherent shame?

Pre-teen girls can't wait to start wearing a bra, unless they actually have already developed breasts, in which case they are ashamed to have to wear one. By the time girls hit their teens, they already understand that breasts come in only two sizes: too big and too small. We know that the boys like them. But, do we really want them to? So, we slouch so that we won't be so "obvious."

By the time we grow up, we are pretty sure that it's a good thing that men like our breasts. Yet this leads to a whole new set of issues. "Eyes up here!" we think when we're talking to a man who can't seem take his eyes off of our decolletage, despite that we like dressing in a manner that accentuates our curves. Philip Roth's 1955 novella, The Breast, riffed on the topic by turning its breast-worshipping male protagonist into a breast -- a 155-pound, walking, talking breast that couldn't stop debating desire versus reason (or, as anyone who has read Philip Roth's works understands, essentially, obsession versus shame).

Breasts are one of the very first subjects of our sexual negotiations: Who can see them? Who can touch them, and if so, on what terms? How many dates before it's permitted? And what is the process for granting permission? When is it appropriate for the bra to come off? If we consent to the bra's removal, should we assist with the inevitable bra-hook-fumbling? Does that make us seem "slutty" because we "want it"? Or does it make us seem powerful because we "want it"? The Black-Eyed Peas parlayed the notion of breasts (and also asses) as power into a hit song with 2005's "My Humps," in which a woman uses her "lovely lady lumps" to turn a man into silly putty: "What you gon' do wit all that breast? All that breast inside that shirt?" he asks. "I'ma make, make, make, make you work. Make you work, work, make you work," she tells him.

But just as we've seemingly gotten it all figured out, we realize that the game has changed. We realize at some point that if a man wants to see a woman topless, he can do so pretty easily. He can go to a strip club or open any number of magazines. Or he can go to an R-rated movie. Or he can watch Game of Thrones or Girls on HBO. Or he can go to a bachelor party. Or he can go on the Internet (there's porn readily available there, I'm told). Thus, it seems that breasts have somehow transformed from "mystical" to "seemingly ubiquitous."

And that's not the only transformation breasts seem to have undergone. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), more than 42,000 American women underwent surgery to make the breasts bigger or smaller or perkier in 2011 alone. That's a lot of women who felt the need to spend thousands of dollars and accept the risks of surgery in order to make their breasts bigger or smaller or perkier. And that number does not even account for the many thousands of women who underwent breast reduction surgery -- it only accounts for women who underwent implant removal. Nor does it account for the a 93,000 women who underwent breast reconstruction after mastectomy.

But none of this is without ambivalence: One who is perfectly comfortable with sexualized ogling of breasts may be equally uncomfortable with seeing breasts used to feed a baby. Breastfeeding in front of other people continues to be an issue of etiquette, if not exactly law. While most hospitals take no issue with breast-enhancement surgeries, some of those hospitals actually ban all websites relating to breast reconstruction, breast prosthetics and post-mastectomy bras. (I know this from personal experience: While hospitalized in Westchester County, N.Y. for a failed reconstruction in 2010, I was unable to research my post-surgical options due to the hospital's firewall.)

And any woman who has ever been pregnant knows that the breasts are the focal point long before the belly becomes prominent. Yet it seems that on network television, only the belly grows; the breasts are coyly ignored. Not sexy enough since they belong to a pregnant woman? Not pretty enough since they don't grow larger for aesthetic purposes, but to prepare to become a milk-producing factory? And then there is whatever we can extrapolate from the fact that not all women who undergo mastectomy go on to have reconstructive surgery, notwithstanding that insurers who pay for mastectomy are required to pay for reconstruction and notwithstanding that there is research that suggests that women who undergo reconstruction may have a more favorable prognosis than women who don't. The bottom line is that what is really wrong with breast cancer is that it originates in the breast. It betrays women as women.

When I was diagnosed in 2002, I knew immediately that I wanted nothing more to do with those traitorous appendages that were threatening my life. But seeing the bruises from my biopsies? I felt mangled on a level far deeper than any bruise on my knee could ever make me. And then the thought of cutting into them? These mounds of flesh that I had wished for and then felt shamed by? That had been at once a source of power and a source of vulnerability? That I had despised when they failed to resemble the cute pregnant breasts of TV moms, but that I celebrated as the miraculous sole source of nutrition during the first three months of the lives of my children? That I alternately loved and hated right up until the moment I counted backward from 100 on the operating room table where I gave them up in a bid to save my life?

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Breast Cancer - What are the Signs

Breast Cancer in women is second only to lung cancer deaths and a woman in the United States has a 1 in 8 chance of having breast cancer in her lifetime. That's a startling 13 percent chance that any woman in the U.S. will get breast cancer during her life.

Breast Examination is vital to a woman's health and personal care. There are a number of things you should be aware of when doing a self-examination; obviously any lump or change in the shape of your breast is reason to have further testing performed. If the breast develops dimpling or the nipple area begins to invert itself, or lumps in the underarm area are also symptoms to have checked by your physician.

Most importantly, it is imperative you know that there really are no definite signs of breast cancer, so get tested regularly!

Having a mammogram is not the most comfortable test to have performed, but the opportunity to live a long and healthy life by getting early detection is worth the short-term discomfort. Recently, there have been new breast examination techniques made available whereby the mammogram procedure may be avoided. The age of medicine is always improving and progressing in our abilities to learn more with less personal invasion. This is even more of a reason not to make excuses not to be checked regularly.

As a woman ages her chances of contracting breast cancer increases dramatically. At age 30 the chances are 1 in 2212, and by age 40, the odds greatly increase to 1 in 235. By age 60, the odds are 1 in 23, so if nothing else prompts you to perform constant monthly self-examinations and yearly office exams with your doctor.

Breast cancer respects no one, and there is no assurance that if your family genealogy does not have a history of breast cancer, you won't contract breast cancer. Don't find reasons not to find out about your current health stats. The procedures are covered under wellness provisions in most insurance policies, so again, get tested regularly.

In our age of breast enlargement and plastic surgery, breast cancer examinations at home may be more difficult to detect changes in the breast, so if you have breast implants, please have yourself check with your doctor on a regimented schedule. It's better to protect your investment for the long term if for no other reason. Hopefully you are not the assuming type, whereby you don't feel pain or observe any changes therefore all is well. Breast cancer does not necessarily show any symptoms, but the office tests rarely miss any stages of breast cancer. Should your doctor find any cancer, the earlier the better and with minimal physical changes in your appearance. Just be safe and not sorry for assuming all is okay.

To learn more about breast cancer and other cancers that you can be tested for, take a look at this site for more detailed symptoms, changes, and hidden clues only you would notice;

http://wealthsmith.com/breast-lung-prostate-cancer.htm

Jim is an online write and entrepreneur who delves into topics of high reader interest and his insights and directions on what he has deiscovered is worth the time invested in his articles. Today, he has found that breast cancer awareness is still lacking in it's application and adhering to the testing.

http://wealthsmith.com/breast-lung-prostate-cancer.htm