“Breathe.” “Just breathe.” If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to do this —while I anxiously waited for my biopsy results, had another round of MRI exams, before and after surgery, throughout the months-long treatment and the years I spent swallowing a daily dose of Tamoxifen — I’d have a down payment for a vacation home in Mexico.

In today’s post, we provide the questions that were sent in and asked during the live session of our Questions and Experts session held in April 2022. In this session, Dr. Jean Seely, Head of the Breast Imaging Section at the Ottawa Hospital, answered questions about breast screening and imaging after breast cancer. In the parentheses, you’ll find the timestamp of where to find the question in the on-demand video. Read our Screening AFTER Breast Cancer Advocacy Guide to learn more about follow-up surveillance for those who have had breast cancer and to learn how to advocate to access the appropriate testing.

It all started in July 2021. A drop of bloody nipple discharge led me down the rabbit hole of Google and WebMD which, for once, was actually reassuring - it’s usually harmless. I scheduled an appointment with my doctor the following day who shared the same sentiment – it is probably nothing, but I will refer you to a breast clinic just in case. As a 30-year-old with no family history of breast cancer and a couple of benign fibroadenomas, I wasn’t too worried, and neither was my Surgical Oncologist initially; the odds were in my favour, it was likely benign. And so I attended my ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy appointments – each time observing how the other women in the waiting room were decades older than me.

A little more than two months ago, I started having weird pains in my right breast. It’s a throbbing sensation that radiates from the right side of my breast all the way to my nipple and then beneath my breast. Sometimes it happens when my arm leans into my breast, other times when I move my entire arm and once in a while, from the impact of my bra resting against my breast. Touching the area with my hands only intensifies the pain and since I seem to have zero impulse control, I find myself pressing into these spots all the time to check if the pain is still there. It is.

I’m writing a different type of article because October is Canadian Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This article isn’t just about me or you. It’s for all of the women who are currently or yet to be diagnosed with breast cancer. So I need to be blunt.

My name is Katharina and I was diagnosed with stage 2a breast cancer in March 2020 just when the pandemic was starting. I was 25 years old at the time. I had to go through testing and treatment alone without any support person by my side.

Recently, after spending eight hours with abdominal pain so intense I was doubled over, I conceded to my sister Liz, who insisted a trip to the hospital was necessary and crawled downstairs, ordered an Uber, pulled a patterned facemask over my nose and mouth and went. Twelve hours, three hits of morphine and one magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of my lower abdominal organs later, the emergency room doctor told me a lesion on the right side of my liver was the culprit. Based on the scans I’d had taken of my major organs prior to my breast cancer surgery, the lesion was new and potentially the result of the original tumor and/or the treatment I’d received post-operation. An ultrasound followed, revealing the lesion’s 5cm length by 5cm depth by 5cm width. A second MRI has been scheduled.

I’m writing this as a PSA for all women. We’re always told to check for lumps and to get mammograms. However, Paget’s disease of the breast is a breast cancer that until October, I had never heard about.