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It’s important to do self-exams and have yearly checkups. In my experience, a combination of both detected my breast cancer. Mammograms did not show it, but self-examinations and ultrasounds did.
 
Over five years, I found lumps and had biopsies. Almost a year to the date after my surgeries another one would appear, and each time the lumps would be at different stages. It wasn’t until the fifth one that we decided it was getting worse, that it was a form of cancer, and that it was time to get a mastectomy.
 
I’ve got a clean bill of health now. It was back in 1994, so it’s been a long time. What’s been hard but good is that any time I know of somebody going through a similar experience, I can relate what I went through--not that it’s the same situation, but I can at least give them my experiences and tell them some things that they can expect. I did learn that size of the breast makes a difference. With smaller-breasted women the breast is denser, and mammograms can’t read through them; however, ultrasounds and self-exams can find what mammograms don’t.
 
Of course at the time of my cancer they didn’t have the technology they have now, but I had a very supportive husband and family who got me through that. That’s pretty much what did it for me. That’s why any time I hear of someone going through this I try to help. Doctors do so many surgeries that they don’t always think to tell you what to expect. I tell people what I went through and what they might want to ask their doctors.
 
Because we were watching it so closely for five years I had the mastectomy, but I didn’t have to go through chemo or radiation.
 
- Coleen