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October 15, 2008

Monthly self-exam helped her find breast cancer in early stage

By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE The Glasgow Daily Times Wed Oct 15, 2008, 08:33 AM CDT

GLASGOW — The one thing Connie Hughes wants to stress is that women must do monthly breast self-examinations.

Doing hers regularly each month helped her find a tumor that otherwise might have gone undetected for a long time.

Hughes had a normal mammogram in August 2007. A little more than eight months later, in May, she “felt a little pain in my breast and laid my hand on what felt like a little rock just under the skin,” she said.

Her first reaction was denial – maybe it was nothing and it would just go away. After all, the previous month she had done a self-exam and felt nothing abnormal. A closer inspection in the shower later, however, told her this was something she couldn’t ignore.

She told her husband, Raymond, about the lump. He urged her to go to the doctor. The next day she scheduled an appointment with her gynecologist. Things started moving very quickly after that.

Following her mammogram, an ultrasound and a biopsy were both scheduled that same day. The ultrasound revealed a solid growth about the size of a quarter, Hughes said.

She was in the surgeon’s office two days later and had surgery on June 6. A lumpectomy was performed and the first lymph node was removed. Nothing was found in the node, which was good news, but a Stage II, medium-growth tumor was diagnosed in the breast tissue.

After six weeks of recovery, she began a series of chemotherapy as a preventative measure in case any cancer cells were still growing in her body. Every 21 days since July 10, Connie has been receiving chemo. She said the day after is always the hardest because the shots she receives for her bone marrow make her whole body hurt.

“There are days I deal with it really good and days I don’t,” she said.

Her last chemo will be Dec. 4, then she will begin radiation treatments sometime after the first of the year.

The doctors tell her the prognosis is good because she caught it early.

That’s why it so important for women to check their breasts each and every month, Hughes said.

“After a while you get to know all the lumps and bumps,” she said, so it’s easier to feel something unfamiliar.

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