Interview 36

Age at interview: 52

Brief Outline:

Had routine mammograms since age 40 because of family history of breast cancer. Presented with bleeding nipple but mammogram done was clear. 3 months later, had another mammogram because she found a lump, which was cancerous. Treatment for breast cancer.

Background:

A health visitor. Married with 2 children.

The cancerous lump she found had not shown up on the mammogram she had had a few months earlier.

Because I had the bleeding from the nipple I had gone and I had the mammogram then. And that mammogram actually didn't show anything. And I then had an ultrasound on the same day. It was in a different breast clinic to the original one. It was done there. And that showed nothing either. And so I was told that they thought it would clear up of its own accord and to come back in six months if it hadn't done. And that was in the September.

Then late in December I found this lump on the other breast, not on the same breast and I went then to a breast clinic. And I had a mammogram. He actually did a needle biopsy first and then, because the breast bled, he could only do a mammogram on the other side. So he couldn't do it on that side. And that, I was very shocked because it showed that it was malignant. And I was very shocked yes. And he used the word cancer and I had gone on a Saturday morning thinking oh I've been on screenings before, you know with lumps, and because I'd had the mammogram three months before I thought oh this is going to be nothing here. It's going to be fine. I turned up on a Saturday morning with nobody with me thinking, you know, it's going to be ok and he said no this is malignant, we've found cancerous cells.

So three months earlier you'd been for a mammogram and that was totally clear?

Yes. It was clear.

It was clear, not that it just hadn't been picked up?

No. It was clear and I said to the consultant very recently that that worried me because she said "Oh you'll have routine mammograms". And that worried me because I thought well, you know, it didn't pick it up then, so what use is it to me now? You know and she got the original mammograms out and reread them for me and I said to her that I just wanted to be very sure they hadn't been misread. But she looked at them all and she said no it just didn't show up. 

Supports breast screening but discusses the false reassurance that her original, normal mammogram...

So in that space of three months, that's when the lump developed?

It was there because at the time I said I felt I could feel something on my other breast and they said to me no there was nothing there. And I sort of felt I could feel it but then I thought well no the mammogram reassured me and I didn't find anything. But she said it, sometimes when they are small, they just don't show up. And because I was peri menopausal they just don't show.

Even that mammogram three months prior to your diagnosis. You did feel a lump?

I did. 

Yet on the mammogram it just didn't show?

I didn't feel a lump as such, I just felt something there wasn't right 

If you were to sum up your views on screening what would they be?

I think it's very good. It's very reassuring but I think you need to know the limits of it. And I don't know that those are made very clear to you. I think you could kind of get a false reassurance from it. And I think, you know, the thing that I would be saying to women is to examine yourself as well. And I think also this thing about learning your own body and your instincts. When I had that instinct that there was something there I didn't follow it enough. And I think also you can actually convince the medical professionals yourself that it's ok, because I was saying things like 'do I feel that this is here because it's in my head because I've got the problem on the other side?' And they are saying 'yes'. I think you can actually lead them up the wrong path as well.

Says embarrassment shouldn't deter women from having routine mammograms because the staff are all...

I would just say absolutely go. I would say it does not hurt. It really doesn't. It's slightly uncomfortable and when you think of the value of it, it's worth every bit of it. And it's not embarrassing at all. You know. I think that's what people's other thought, you know, will I be embarrassed or. Well it isn't embarrassing at all, you know, it's their job and they do it really, really well and have been really good.