My entire life has been blessed with excellent health and a strong body that has allowed me to do whatever I wanted or needed to do. After receiving a negative result for the BReast CAncer gene mutation (both BRCA 1 and 2), I had assumed that breast cancer was not likely going to be a part of my future. Frankly, I assumed that because I had more of my father and paternal grandmother's personality and physical build. My grandmother died of a heart attack when she was 75. My maternal grandmother died of ovarian cancer in her 90s. So, I was focused on preventing heart disease.
However, there was a part of me that respected the unpredictable impact of a stressful career requiring almost 2.5M miles of air travel, miscellaneous environmental factors, never having been pregnant, a hysterectomy in my 40s, drinking more than the guidelines state, and my mother's identical twin sister being diagnosed with breast cancer. So, yes, I did have ghosts in my wood pile.
Because of these unknowable impacts, I continued to get a screening mammogram from the same provider so as to establish a baseline history. But I literally viewed it as "something that is simply smart to do." Little did I know that this routine screening would one day identify a mass of <0.635cm and ensure that life after cancer was possible.
If you have even one ghost (health risk) for breast cancer, give yourself the gift of routine mammogram screenings. It may literally save your life!