The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel of doctors and scientists, shares its new guidelines for breast cancer screening, and the protocol doesn’t sit well with people who were diagnosed with breast cancer when they were younger than 50.
The task force standards are simple but could be deadly as they instill in people that those who are not at high risk of breast cancer, “don’t need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50,”…and that “breast self-exams do no good,” according to AP writer Jocelyn Noveck.
Middletown business woman, Frances Melder, chief executive officer and administrator of Southwinds Retirement Home at Fulton Square is appalled by these new findings. A breast cancer survivor, diagnosed at 46 with Stage 2 invasive lobular cancer, Melder feels that finding what she says was more like “a longated something-not-right, not necessarily a lump” during a self-breast exam in her 40s gave her the joy of being around now for her granddaughter. Finding this abnormality in her left breast was just the beginning of her education on breast cancer. From this finding came mammography, sonogram, biopsy, surgery, and post surgery treatment. All of which were possible because her cancer was detected early.
After more government standards were put on the table regarding the stress of false positive results and unneeded breast biopsies, Melder questions another stress level: when diagnoses is 5 years or even one year too late. Isn’t it better to be diagnosed early and be educated, shares Melder, before the diagnosis is less hopeful? “Early detection is prevention,” and “there isn’t any unnecessary biopsy,” she reasons.
Unlike the government task force, the American Cancer Society remains steadfast in its recommendations for annual mammograms to begin at 40, high risk or not. This is a good thing because if government findings are acknowledged, the issue of insurance coverage will be questioned. Melder states, “This protocol will only give insurance companies another reason not to approve mammos until 50.” But she adds, breast cancer is “still the second leading killer of women, so why change protocol?”
From a business standpoint, Melder is aware that less medical technicians will save money, and fewer reasons to insure will save money. However, she questions, “What about the future?” She thinks of her grown children and her 18-month-old granddaughter and finds it absurd not to continue with the breast cancer screening standards in place.
She also thinks of the importance of life and the fact that even one life is worth saving. As the government rallies that screening 1,300 women in their 50s to save a life is more important than screening 1,900 women in their 40s, Melder concludes, “I don’t care if a million women are screened.” If she hadn’t been educated about self-breast exams, hadn’t had annual mammograms, hadn’t done all that the American Cancer Society enforces to help prevent breast cancer, she adds, she would have been one of those fatal statistics.