Lilly Gale, author of Out of Darkness and Cancer Survivor

Please welcome Lilly Gale, author and cancer survivor.

She has a message she wants to share with us, so I’m going to skip the interview stuff and jump into her blog.

Blog-

At night and on weekends, I am a wife, a mother, and a writer. My first novel, Out of the Darkness, a paranormal vampire romance was released from The Wild Rose Press in May of this year. But my day job is in a hospital. I'm a radiologic technologist and mammographer. And I've always been an advocate of the FDA and the American Cancer Society's recommendations for women concerning their breast health.

• Women 20-39 should have a physical examination of the breast (CBE or clinical breast exam) at least every three years, performed by health care professional such as a physician, physician assistant, nurse or nurse practitioner. CBE may often be received in the same appointment as a Pap smear. Women 20-39 should also perform monthly BSE.(Breast Self Exam)
• Women age 35 should have their baseline mammogram.
• Women 40 and older should have a physical examination of the breast (CBE or clinical breast exam) every year, performed by a health care professional, such as a physician, physician assistant, nurse or nurse practitioner. CBE can often be performed in the same visit as a mammogram. Monthly BSE should also be performed.
• Women 40 years of age should receive a screening mammogram every year. The National Cancer Institute recommends mammography every one to two years for women between 40-50 years of age. Beginning at age 50, screening mammography should be performed every year.

But in June 2007, I was lax. It had been 18 months since my last mammogram (which was normal.) I had an appointment with my doctor to follow up on my migraine medicine and mentioned the gap. He immediately wrote an order for my annual screening. My clinical breast exam was normal and I had not found any breast lumps myself. In fact, I had no risk factors for breast cancer.

What are those factors?

Being female- Okay, I had one risk factor!

A first degree relative diagnosed with breast cancer: (mother, sister, daughter, maternal grandmother, maternal aunts)- my father's first cousin had just been diagnosed in April, but that's not a first degree relative and she was the only one.

Early menarche--younger than 12 – I was 13. TMI?

Older age at menopause--over 55 –I was only 47 in 2007.

Years of artificial hormones after a hysterectomy –I had a hysterectomy in 2005 and never filled the hormone prescription. Ironically, I didn't want to increase my risk of breast cancer.

Nulliparity (Never having children)- I have two beautiful daughters.

Not breast feeding- I breast fed both my girls for at least the first six weeks.

Late first time pregnancy- I was 25 the first time I got pregnant.

On June 14, 2007, after I finished with my last patient, I got one of the other mammographers to take my mammogram. We didn't have digital mammography then and had to wait for the films to fall from the processor. And the moment I saw that spiculated lesion lying next to my chest wall in my right breast, I knew. I would have to wait for a diagnostic mammogram and then a biopsy, but I knew deep in my gut that it would prove to be cancer. I had seen too many cancers on film in my career not to know that I had just become the one in eight women diagnosed each year with breast cancer.

I underwent two excisional biopsies on my right breast and a lymph node biopsy to see if the disease had spread to my nodes. Thank God it hadn't. I was stage one. But the tumor was aggressive and would not respond to hormone treatments. So, I had a MUGA scan, which is a Nuclear Medicine test to assess the heart and then underwent eight weeks of chemotherapy.

Thankfully, I didn't throw up. I had constant indigestion and a lot of nausea but it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. I think the new meds they give cancer patients helped but I did lose all my hair and was completely bald for months. Then before I could start radiation treatments, I had to have an MRI to make sure the chemo destroyed all the cancer cells. If it hadn't I would have had a mastectomy. But again, I was lucky. The remaining breast looked clear, as did my left breast. So, I had three months of radiation and was declared "cured" in December of 2007.

I see my oncologist every three months and I still have blood work drawn. And until my last mammogram, I was getting mammograms every six months. I graduated to yearly screening mammograms this year. Yay me!

FYI. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) came up with new "guidelines" for woman. You can see these guidelines at:

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/clickToGive/mammogramguidelines.faces?siteId=2#USPSTF

They have decided that women don't need to screen for breast cancer until they are fifty.

My problem with this, besides the fact that I was a 47 year old breast cancer patient with no family history whose cancer was discovered on a screening mammogram, the statistics don't mention the fact that cancers found in women under 50 are more aggressive. If they are not caught while the patient is still asymptomatic (before they find a lump) the mortality rate risesThe American Cancer Society, the FDA (also a federal agency), and every mammographer I know recommend screening mammograms for all women over 40. And with the new health insurance laws that came into effect October 1 that prevents insurance companies from charging co-pays and deductibles for mammograms, there is no reason why women 40-80 shouldn't have a screening mammogram every year.

Since mammography screening reduces breast cancer death by 15% for women ages 39 to 49, I can't imagine why any agency would recommend waiting until age 50 or why any woman would hesitate to schedule her annual screening.

It is your body. Your breast. Your life. And your right.

You can find out more about breast cancer at www.cancer.org or www.breastcancer.org

OUT OF THE DARKNESS: Available now from The Wild Rose Press-- Her research could cure his dark hunger if a covert government agent doesn't get to her first.
www.lillygayle.com
www.lillygayleromance.blogspot.com