Skip to main content

Brittany's Story

Brittany, bald from treatment, with two young children
Name: Brittany
State: Virginia
Date of diagnosis: October 1, 2014
Age at time of diagnosis: 29
Stage of diagnosis: 1a
Date of mammogram: Sept. 16. 2014
How was cancer diagnosed: Felt by me, detected by ultrasound

Brittany's Story: At 29 years old and with no family history, it is not even recommended for me to have an annual mammogram. Twenty-nine-year-old breasts are usually pretty dense, anyway, making mammograms almost obsolete. I had a slight shooting pain radiate through my breast and found a lump in my right breast and, fortunately, my first screening was an ultrasound. On September 16th, I had a follow-up mammogram that was only dubbed as "inconclusive" versus "normal" due to the fact that I had a palpable lump and an abnormal ultrasound. "Cancer doesn't hurt" and "You're too young" were told by me by several health care providers. If only they were right. A biopsy then confirmed the worst: I had invasive ductal breast cancer. After my mastectomy, pathology results showed that my tumor was 1.7 cm and the cancer had not spread to my lymph nodes. I was diagnosed as stage 1A, Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I had a mastectomy and am completing chemotherapy. To me, however, the most important aspect of this is my two daughters,currently ages four and one and a half. Because of my diagnosis at such a young age, it is now recommended for them to start breast cancer screenings at 19 years old. With my new knowledge about mammograms and dense breasts, I will be able to advocate for better screening methods for them when mammograms appear "normal" on their young, dense breasts.

Back to Stories

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.