I was diagnosed with Invasive Lobular Carcinoma 2 years ago. It’s a pretty familiar story in that I have dense breasts but had annual mammograms regularly. For so many years now ( I was 70 at the time of diagnosis), got the letter declaring nothing had changed and to come back in a year. The cancer didn’t show up on a mammogram or the ultrasound but they did a MRI to find my left breast was so full of cancer they couldn’t do a mastectomy at that time. It’s quite common with this type of cancer to not be seen on mammograms and it’s a slow growing cancer but it had metastasized in my skin (our largest major organ). After 6 months of taking Exemestane, the margins were good enough for surgery so they did a bilateral mastectomy. That showed it had metastasized in my lymph nodes. They removed 19 nodes, 17 of which were cancerous . They couldn’t remove any more so now J am trying to learn to live with incurable cancer.

The medical system is broken in this way. Insurance companies won’t pay for MRIs unless it’s absolutely necessary so this cancer goes undetected but when it is detected it’s usually Stage 3 or 4.
It’s seldom felt I’m a lump so so one does anything.

My daughters are now in High Risk Breast Cancer Clinics in their respective cities where they get 2 screenings a year - one mammogram and 1 MRI. If nothing else good comes of this, my daughters will have far better imaging than I did. No one ever suggested this to me but they certainly should have!