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Julie's Story

Name: Julie
State: Ohio
Date of Diagnosis: July 26, 2011
Age at Diagnosis: 48
Stage of Diagnosis: 3A
Time from "normal" mammogram to diagnosis: 10 months
How was cancer detected?: By Julie

Like many women featured on the website I did everything right. I was a long distance runner, ate organic, did not smoke, did not ever take a birth control pill, got annual physicals and yearly mammograms. I also had family history which I discussed regularly with my OBGYN and Primary Care Physician. They never mentioned my dense breast tissue and the need for an ultrasound as a secondary screening method.

Just 5 weeks after my annual OBGYN/breast exam and 10 months after my last "clear" mammogram I found a lump which seemed to come out of nowhere. It also hurt once I found it. My doctor looked at it and gave me the usual response "breast cancer doesn't usually hurt" but sent me down to the breast clinic for an ultrasound and mammogram. The mammogram found nothing so they brought me in to do the ultrasound. There it was - a 7 cm tumor. I had a bi-lateral mastectomy two weeks later which found 3 positive nodes for cancer as well. I then started 8 rounds of chemo, reconstruction and 25 rounds of radiation.

I'm now on a mission to educate women AND doctors about dense breast tissue. The medical field needs to be better educated to counsel women with family history and dense breast tissue. I lost my grandmother, great aunt and great grandmother to breast cancer over 40 years ago - it just doesn't seem like we have made enough progress in reliable screening for all women for this to happen so many years later.

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AYD In The News

What is Dense Breast Tissue?

How Do I Know if I Have Dense Breast Tissue?

What Do I Do if I Have Dense Breast Tissue?

Are You Dense? Fact #1:
Breast density is one of the strongest predictors of the failure of mammography screening to detect cancer.
Are You Dense? Fact #2:
Two-thirds of pre-menopausal women and 40% of post-menopausal women have dense breast tissue.
Are You Dense? Fact #3:
Adding more sensitive tests to mammography significantly increase detection of invasive cancers that are small and node negative.
Are You Dense? Fact #4:
American College of Radiology describes women with "Dense Breast Tissue" as having a higher than average risk of Breast Cancer.
Are You Dense? Fact #5:
While a mammogram detects 98% of cancers in women with fatty breasts, it finds only 48% in women with dense breasts.
Are You Dense? Fact #6:
A woman at average risk and a woman at high risk have an EQUAL chance of having their cancer masked by mammogram.
Are You Dense? Fact #7:
Women with dense breasts who had breast cancer have a four times higher risk of recurrence than women with less-dense breasts.
Are You Dense? Fact #8:
A substantial proportion of Breast Cancer can be attributed to high breast density alone.
Are You Dense? Fact #9:
Cancer turns up five times more often in women with extremely dense breasts than those with the most fatty tissue.
Are You Dense? Fact #10
There are too many women who are unaware of their breast density, believe their “Happy Gram” when it reports no significant findings and are at risk of receiving a later stage cancer diagnosis.