Interview 21

Age at interview: 52

Brief Outline:

Attended for routine screening at age 49. Was diagnosed with DCIS. Had excision biopsy. Results revealed presence of cancer cells. Had another excision biopsy. Results showed DCIS affected whole breast. Had a mastectomy and reconstruction, and radiotherapy.

Background:

A teacher, married with 1 adult child.

Had a core biopsy, which was not painful.

Can you tell me what the core biopsy involves? What was the whole procedure? 

You're, again, you are put in a clamp like a mammogram and then they, first they looked under x-ray to see where the calcium dots were and then they punched, and it's more than a needle, it's thicker, but they punch down on the breast and then this, out it comes and within that tube, it takes a little sort of tube full of tissue and that's what they then analyse.

Was this on local anaesthetic, or...?

Yes, yes. You had an injection just to anaesthetise the area. That, I mean some people have found it incredibly painful, I didn't really find that too bad at all. A tiny little scar from it and that's all.

Says that if she hadn't gone for screening she wouldn't have known there was a problem until much...

I felt all the time no you know, we've caught this in time, well in time and that is the advantage again of screening, if you do pick up something early like that, you know you've got a, you know, a hundred percent chance of being fine because it's been caught so early.

Yes because that, there were absolutely no symptoms?  

No, because I was actually quite worried, because I said to the surgeon, "Should I have detected this?" And he said "There is absolutely no way you could have detected this because there is no lump." And he did say to me that you know "By the time a lump has occurred" he said "that might have taken two years to occur."  

So he said "You are so far ahead of the game, you know," he said "really," he said "you're not lucky," but he said "you're also very lucky that the mammogram picked it up when it did, because it's enabled us to be one jump ahead." 

She says it was important to be screened knowing that the incidence of breast cancer increases...

So you chose to go at the age of 49. What would your, if someone asked you what are your reasons for attending for breast screening, what would your reasons be?

Purely that I was aware that, you know when you reach the age of 50, the statistics of breast cancer go up and I just felt it was a safe, a safety thing really just to do that. That was my own personal feelings. And, as I say, simply because you know as you get older the statistics are higher.