Latest report on Breast Cancer and Mammograms I'm so angry I don't know what to do!

[Robyn66]

I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer last year when I was 42 years old. I cannot emphasize one point enough. THIS WAS NOT CAUGHT EARLY, IT WAS CAUGHT IN TIME, I am talking about at the last opportunity before I was going to be really in trouble.

You see, I have no history in my family of breast cancer and I never wanted to get a mammogram in the first place, so I put it off. So I didn't get my baseline until the day the found the cancer. I had to have a radical mastectomy because as my oncologist put it the breast was "pretty full of cancer" and I had one lymph node involved so I needed chemotherapy.

I have a good chance of never having another problem again, but I would have had a BETTER chance if I had started getting mammograms at age 35 like my doctor wanted me to. I KNOW they would have caught the cancer before it was in a lymph node.

Now, some government panel is saying women don't NEED mammograms until they are 50. Two years ago I would have been PSYCHED about that. I would have been able to put that off for another 8 years. I am SICK when I think of how far the cancer would have advanced by that point if I had.

Insurance companies already don't want to pay for mammograms, and the fact is, breast cancer is being found in younger and younger women every day. But the sooner you are diagnosed the better chance you catch it before it has spread. When mammograms and biopsies start getting considered "unnecessary" or "over ordered" women are going to start DYING. They will be diagnosed at stage 3 or 4. It makes me wonder who made up this government panel and where the insurance company lobbyists fall into play.

This makes me so incredibly angry and I don't know what to do. Do I call my congressman? I wish I could talk to Keith Olberman because this is the type of thing I imagine he would be all over. I have been absolutely furious sick and sad about this since I heard last night and I don't know where to start fighting but the fighting has to start somewhere!! Our mothers sisters daughters and friends LIVES depend on it!!!!