10/08/2026
Here is one more reason why we want ya’ll to get your mammograms this month! Dana is doing well today because she caught a precancerous condition early.
Bonus: if you get your mammogram this month we will give you 10% off your purchase. Just bring in your appt confirmation or any other kind of documentation to be eligible. We aren’t the FBI—we just want you to get screened!
My online store has been a little low on product lately (working on resupplying the next few months) and I thought I'd give a little insight into my life this summer so everyone can understand why.
October is breast cancer awareness month. With that in mind might I share the story of my last 6 months in the hope that it will get more of you ladies in to get your mammograms.
In April I went in for a routine mammogram (I must admit I haven't had one for quite a few years). I do self-checks regularly and haven't ever felt anything concerning so I wasn't too worried. A week or so later I got a call from the hospital saying they wanted to get some better images of my center right side. I wasn't concerned with this either since 11 years ago they flagged the same area and determined it was likely cysts. I figured this would be the same thing.
I went in for more images. They took me back three times, kept taking more and more pictures. I remember thinking, "Is this the beginning of a nightmare?" After all the images they took me in to do ultrasound pictures. Then the doctor came and said they'd like to do a biopsy on the right side - yep, beginning of a nightmare.
Ten days later (a long 10 days) I went in for the biopsy. This was not fun. My results showed that I have Lobular Carcinoma In Situ (LCIS) with some additional benign findings around it. As far as breast cancer goes, this is not true cancer, but more of a pre-cursor to cancer (I like to call it cancer-adjacent), putting me at high risk (20-40%) for future invasive breast cancer. It is almost always only found once other things start forming around it, as it was in my case. It looks like normal tissue, and isn't able to be seen in mammograms or MRIs. So now I know it's on the right, and growing things around it, but there's no way to know if it's on the left.
So to try to get a better look I had to do an MRI - which didn't really do anything since it was still basically invisible. I saw three different surgeons and had a number of options:
1. Start estrogen blocking meds (which would put me straight into menopause) to try to stop any growth. Yearly or bi-annual MRIs to watch for any visible changes or invasive cancer popping up and hope anything new is caught before it spreads. This same spot had been flagged before, so this had probably already been there for 11-12 years.
2. Lumpectomy on the right, followed by estrogen blocking meds. Possibly also followed by radiation should anything more show up in pathology after it's removed. Did I mention this can reoccur on the right and/or turn up in the left? Also it can become invasive if not caught early enough.
3. Risk reducing double mastectomy followed by reconstruction to remove all breast tissue and reduce my risk for invasive breast cancer to less than 1%. Providing my pathology afterwards comes back clear there's no need to do anything further as far as meds or screening.
After a lot of thought I decided I couldn't leave this threat inside me and hope it wouldn't spread before it's stopped - isn't that where I was at now afterall? Right now I have the chance to stop it. I didn't want to take hormone medications either. I just wanted to make sure I could be around for my family as long as I could, with or without breasts. There was only one choice that I thought made any sense for me.
So on August 7th I had a double mastectomy with a goldilocks reconstruction. My pathology came back clear - so grateful it was all contained and hadn't become invasive. Today was 8 weeks since surgery and I'm feeling almost back to normal. I have 2 more reconstruction procedures in my future, the first just before Thanksgiving, and the 2nd sometime in a year or so. My neck has really appreciated my chest being much lighter, and my final reconstructed size will remain significantly smaller than I was (no complaints there).
In the meanwhile it hasn't been easy to see my chest without breasts, but I remind myself everyday that it's something that will be "fixed" in the future. But beyond getting new girls, I'm mostly grateful my condition was caught before it became invasive and could be stopped.
So for all of you ladies out there, please get yourself checked regularly, if you're over 40 or high risk, do it annually - if not for yourself, for all of those people in your life that need and love you. I had no concerns in April going in for my mammogram, but I'm very grateful I did and my "cancer-adjacent" condition was caught before it was cancer-cancer.
