Essay on Breast Cancer

October is breast cancer awareness month, at least in the United States. We declared war on cancer many decades and billions of dollars ago. It is one of many topics I never wrote about until now. Like many educated, upper middle class American women, I sought a mammogram when I was 40 years old (1983), then dutifully felt myself every month and received annual screenings until 2005.

That year, the Kaiser Permanente health care system announced to patients that mammograms every two years was good enough for women between 50 and 69. When I questioned this, a physician mumbled something about "no statistical difference" between annual and biennial screenings. So, I skipped getting one in 2005. My 2006 mammogram revealed a big, hazy blob. It was a T2N1A estrogen positive, HER2 negative tumor of tubular cancer, which had spread to the lymphatic system.

Two lumpectomies, one lymphectomy (21 nodes removed) and two months of frightening radiation later, a technician compared my 2004 and 2006 mammograms. When I asked if I'd had one in 2005, she completed my sentence with, "they would have caught it before it spread."

No statistical difference? What about the financial, human and spiritual differences cancer makes in the lives of those undiagnosed because of a missed mammo? And why, after all the money donated and spent on years of research, is there no better treatment in my case than preventing my body from producing the hormone that my type of breast cancer thrives on? "We can't cure it, you know," an oncologist remarked to me. Obviously we can't prevent it, either, but we can prevent it from being worse than it has to be.

Annual mammograms must be mandatory.

My thanks to the Mayo Clinic website for comprehensive information.

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