(WXYZ) — Terry Gruley has always maintained a healthy lifestyle. Her family even gave her the nickname 'bear' because her diet consists of mostly salmon and berries.
“I consider myself to be healthy and health savvy,” she says.
She also never misses an annual mammogram or a monthly self-breast exam. And it was during her routine self-check that she felt something.
“Not a lump but a firmness in my left breast that just didn’t seem normal to me,” she said.
The next day she went into her doctor's office and despite the techs feeling the swelling, the mammogram came back clear.
“She told me to come back in six months just to be sure, and I looked at her and asked is that what you would do? And she said oh yes, yes.”
Gruley is thankful she did not take that advice. Instead, she went to another doctor who got her in to see a surgical oncologist. After a biopsy and an MRI, she learned that she had stage three lobular cell carcinoma.
After the news, Gruley went back to her previous doctor and requested her mammogram reports. That's when she discovered a sentence stating that 10 to 15 percent of cancers will not be identified by mammograms.
“If you have dense breast only 50-60% of cancers can be found through the dense tissue," she said. "You’re like looking for a snowball in a snowstorm."
Doctor Lisa Awan, a diagnostic radiologist says it's safe to assume most young women have dense breasts. The chest becomes fattier as time pasts.
If an older woman has dense breasts, it's mandatory for that to be listed on a mammogram report.
“If your mammogram and your ultrasound are both clean and you have a lump, you’re good 98 percent of the time, but that still leaves 2 percent of the population where if you’re feeling a lump you push for yourself to get a biopsy 100 percent.”
Terry is now 1.5 years cancer-free. She felt tasked to share her story because she hopes more woman will take their health into their own hands.
“Mammograms are great but it doesn’t mean you’re safe."
