Story by Shirley Aycoth

I am currently a two-and-a-half year breast cancer survivor. I truly believe that the reason I am a survivor is because I had a routine mammogram in February 2006. I was late scheduling my mammogram that year and as a woman, and especially as a health professional, I knew better. I knew I was high risk, but life was just so busy, that I kept putting it off. Finally, at my husband’s insistence, I scheduled my appointment, six months late.

My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer five years earlier at age 44. Our entire family was in shock. We had no family history or risk factors that we knew of, other than being female. She had a mastectomy and treatment and seemed to physically be doing well, but as she once told me, “Cancer changes you.” To celebrate her five-year survival, she asked our older sister and I to join her on a Breast Cancer Walk in Florida. This was not just any walk, this was quite a commitment: The three-day Breast Cancer Walk involves walking 20 miles a day for three days and raising at least $2,300 each. But we were so thankful for our sister’s recovery, that’s exactly what we did: We traveled to Florida that October, walked 60 miles in three days (in the Florida heat), and together raised about $12,000. Exhausted, blistered, sunburned, but elated at the end of the walk, I made the comment that this was my insurance policy against breast cancer. Surely I couldn’t walk all this way, raise all of this money and then end up with breast cancer. Little did I know at the time, cancer was probably already growing in my body. The routine mammogram that I finally got around to three months later found that I had invasive lobular breast cancer.