I will never forget the moment I discovered my own breast cancer . I was in the shower, rushing to get to work, daydreaming about an upcoming vacation, when I felt it: the tiny pebble lodged firmly in my right breast. I just stood there, not breathing, under the water.
Would I lose my breasts? Would I get to see my daughter grow up? Finally, after fearing it for so long—knowing the history of breast cancer on both sides of my family, being hyper-aware of the 1 in 8 risk for all women—I knew my turn had arrived. After a battery of tests, a diagnosis, and many decisions, I wound up having a double mastectomy. But at least I had found the cancer early.
Because the mammogram I’d had on my dense breasts less than a year before had not. So I was surprised to learn, then, only recently, that breast self-exams are no longer recommended as a screening tool by most experts—including the National Cancer Institute , the National Comprehensive Cancer Network , the American Cancer Society , and the United States Preventive Services Task Force ( USPSTF ), the volunteer task force of experts that makes recommendations to Congress, which first urged “against teaching breast self-examination (BSE)” back in 2009 and makes no mention of BSE in its current recommendations . Still, while I’d technically found my own lump by accident, just like 18% of women diagnosed with breast cancer, plenty of others—anywhere from 25% to 75% of all diagnoses, depending on the study , of which the.
