Gaine
AgelessThrival™
Magazine

Article from Issue #62 (October 7, 2023)

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

by Catherine Wylie and others

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In the spring of 1986 my dear friend Brenda came over for lunch and sat in a chair in my living room.

“Where are the kids?” I asked as my last two and her two littles were the same age.

“I have something to tell you” Brenda said. “You are going to be mad at me. I have had a lump in my breast for 16 years and if I had told you you would have made me deal with it properly.”

We found out 2 days later it was Breast Cancer. My heart broke and she was gone by August 1988.

Nothing worked. We used science and spiritually together and it just ravaged her body. Today treatment is vastly different. Here is an article that lets you know where we are in 2023. Be vigilant and take care of yourself. Your body is your temple.

Parminder Punia

Early detection saves lives.

Screening detects breast cancer in its very early stages, ahead of a lump or any other symptoms present

Source: Breast Cancer Canada

If routine screening had been accessible to Parminder beginning at age 40, her breast cancer could have been caught earlier, before the disease had the opportunity to spread.

Routine mammograms beginning at the age of 50 are missing early and aggressive cancers.

Breast Cancer Canada is urging Canada to follow the example set by the U.S. task force and lower the recommended age for regular screening mammograms to 40. Routine screening in women aged 40 to 49 reduces the relative risk of dying of breast cancer by 15 percent.

Parminder has heard the words “you have breast cancer,” and knows what it’s like to have her life changed forever. In August 2021, at the age of 46, Parminder felt a lump in her right breast. After weeks of exploration and tests, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Parminder’s mother had breast cancer at the age of 74 years old. Thankfully her mother’s diagnosis was caught at a very early stage.

For Parminder, her own diagnosis came as a “complete shock”.

“Unfortunately my cancer was more developed and had spread to my lymph nodes. It was a diagnosis that I never expected. It turned my world upside down,” she shares. Screening sooner means the breast cancer might be treated through removal of the tumor, not the entire breast, patients could be spared the side-effects of chemotherapy, and individuals are diagnosed before the cancer advances and invades other parts of the body.

Parminder is passionate about advocating for better breast cancer screening for women in Canada, especially those with a family history of the disease, like her daughter.

“I can’t stress the importance of routine mammograms enough,” she says. “Screening detects breast cancer in its very early stages, ahead of a lump or any other symptoms present.”

Research has shown us that when breast cancer is diagnosed at earlier stages, it’s more treatable, treatment is less complex, the side effects are less invasive, and chances recurrences are lower.

With your help, we can know more about breast cancer. And that helps us detect it earlier for patients like Parminder.