An Angel on My Shoulder

At the end of last year I accidentally felt a lump in my left breast. It was an accident because I don't do self breast exams … too many bumps for a semi-hypochondriacal over-reactor. But I am diligent about regular mammograms and breast ultrasounds, which I've been undergoing every six months for years since I developed my first benign fibroadenoma at age 29. My previous screening last June had been fine.

Still, one morning in early December, an inexplicable impulse had forced me to touch an area of my breast. I pressed on a hard, round ball. Instead of phoning the doctor at once, terror-stricken — which would have been my usual response — I told myself to relax. I'd worked myself up over many breast findings throughout the years and they'd all been harmless. I told myself I'd re-examine it in a few weeks.

Unfortunately I became distracted in the weeks following. My father was dying of prostate cancer.

I did eventually get around to checking out the lump around a month later. The day after I had a mammogram and ultrasound, my doctor rang to recommend a biopsy ASAP. She said, "If it's malignant, you have an angel on your shoulder because you found it." I did not find this reassuring. The biopsy revealed I had stage two breast cancer.

I was stupefied.

How could I have cancer at age 42, with so much more to accomplish and experience, with my children's problems, victories and milestones to usher them through? How could I have cancer when I recently purchased Rick Steves' Italy 2011 and Frommer's Italy Day by Day to begin planning my family's summer vacation in Venice, Rome and the Amalfi Coast?

That it had slipped past stage one to stage two when I'd been doing all the right things for years compounded my devastation. I bashed myself for not calling the doctor sooner, for ignoring that lump for weeks.

Yet, if I focused with extra gusto on the positive, I considered myself lucky. I remembered that I had forgotten about the lump after I discovered it and could have continued on without giving it another thought. But, the day after my father's funeral, while in the shower a voice urged me to see if it was still there. I did have an angel on my shoulder.

When I tell people I have breast cancer, I see angst in their eyes. Angst that if I can have cancer, so could they. Several of my mammo-avoider friends were scared straight — they made screening appointments right away.

Experts say only 50 percent of women over age 40 have an annual mammogram, which is hard to believe considering the pervasiveness of messages about the importance of early detection. According to the American Cancer Society, 98 percent of all breast cancer patients survive when the disease is found early.

Following the American Cancer Society's guidelines for the early detection of breast cancer improves the chances that breast cancer can be diagnosed at an early stage and treated successfully.

My dear reader, encourage your sister, mother, daughter, aunt, wife or girlfriend to take care of her breast health using every tool available. You could be an angel on someone's shoulder.