Breast Cancer Prevention, is a Mammogram Enough?

I thought that if you did monthly self-examinations of your breasts, and had yearly mammograms you would be pretty well assured of protecting yourself against breast cancer. I have yearly exams and have lumpy bumpy breast tissue. I also have a serious predisposition to cancer. My maternal great-grandmother, grandmother and her sister as well as a first cousin have all had breast cancer. Three of my maternal grandparents have died from cancer. I am pretty vigilant about taking care of myself.

I went to a woman's conference where a lady shared that she went in for her yearly mammogram and them mammogram looked like she had white rice scattered in her breasts. She had breast cancer. Another friend had a physical and came home assured of her health and several days later had a rather large lump appear on her breast and found out she was in the later stages of breast cancer. She was just about six months younger than I and died of it later. She had no history of breast cancer in her family.

I talked to a lady today in the dentist's office. She is rigid in taking care of her health. She is forty -seven years old and takes great care of herself. She eats organic foods, takes large amounts of organic vitamins and is a vegetarian. She has regular mammograms. She had a lump that the doctor assured her was just a fibroid. He told her that if she were his wife he would tell her not to worry and watch it. He was 99.9 percent sure that it was not cancer. She decided to have a biopsy. They said they would have it to compare in the future to other tissue. She had breast cancer. She has had radiation and no chemotherapy, but if it weren't because of the suggestion of another Dr. she would be walking around with cancer that she had for two years.

I have a lump that they said was calcium and they even did an ultrasound on it. I am seriously considering having them biopsy it just because of the huge cancer history in our family. Better safe than sorry, I don't understand when it is such a simple procedure that they don't do it more often, when many times mammograms do not detect cancer.