[flynny]

Hi Joe, I tried sending this last night on my blackberry, but it timed me out (so frustrating). I am a young survivor! As you can see by my signature below I was dx at 34 (should have been 33). My story as some of the women and men have heard me talk about goes like this... My mother was dx at 54 and there was NO FAMILY HISTORY of BC, so they said I should NOT start having mammo's until 40. I was 31 when I was told this and just 2 years later I found my lump. When I say it popped out over night, it did. However,when I went to see my PCP (who was about my age) said "I think its a cyst" and knowing my mother had BC she did NO FURTHER tests!!! Hold on it gets better....My mother was dx about 2 mos later w/ a 5 cm brain tumor (the radiologist mis-diagnosed her 2 cm brain tumor just 5 mos prior - another story). After focusing my time toward my mother and taking her to all of her appointments, it was now Nov '07 and I found my bras to be stained. So I made an appt. w/my OB-GYN (but her colleague saw me instead). I'm in her office explaining my insane life I was living and that my mother's cancer had mets and she would most likely die within a short period of time. Well after examining me and seeing that the discharge coming out of my right breast she said "I think you have fibrocystic breast change and that I should take 400 IU Vit E 2 x/day. I still have the post-it note she wrote on. I could go on and on. My mother had very dense breasts and I only wish I knew what that meant years ago. If she only had an ultrasound they would have seen it earlier. She had seen her OB-GYN just a couple of months prior to her finding her nipple indented. This whole thing makes me so sad, mad and disappointed in a number of doctors. We are not a statistic. WE ARE INDIVIDUALS!!! I also want to share with you my story that I got to share with my local magazine. Go to www.parentingnh.com. They messed up my staging (which I clarified with the reporter). I also joined our local YSC Manchester, NH group. It is important to let young women know that this could happen to them!