It was fortunate timing for me because it was just at a very early stage, you know, and the timing couldn’t have been better for me to have that mammogram. Because they obviously do areas and they’d obviously, the area, they’d come to where I live and if I’d lived somewhere else they may, I may not have been called for another 18 months or something. So the timing was very good because they caught the in situ so early that it was just beginning. The chalk deposits were just beginning to form, which is an early way that the cancer manifests itself. And they, I couldn’t have had a better time. It was visible but not dangerous so I just think that somebody, somewhere, was really looking after me.

Well, I would say to them [other women], “please go and take the screening because it saved my life and it could save your life.” I know some people are frightened in case they find anything but that’s what you want them to do. That you want them to find it because if they don’t find it, it isn’t going to go away. And the sooner they find it, the much higher chance you have of completely successful treatment.

I felt all the time no you know, weve caught this in time, well in time and that is the advantage again of screening, if you do pick up something early like that, you know you’ve got a, you know, a hundred percent chance of being fine because it’s been caught so early.

Yes because that, there were absolutely no symptoms;

No, because I was actually quite worried, because I said to the surgeon, “Should I have detected this?” And he said “There is absolutely no way you could have detected this because there is no lump.” And he did say to me that you know “By the time a lump has occurred” he said “that might have taken two years to occur.

So he said “You are so far ahead of the game, you know,” he said “really,” he said “you’re not lucky,” but he said “you’re also very lucky that the mammogram picked it up when it did, because it’s enabled us to be one jump ahead.

One of my concerns was that if I hadn’t gone for this mammogram I wouldn’t have known anything because I was always told, like lots of women, that you feel for a lump. There was no lump, there was no problems with the nipple, there was nothing like that at all, I had seen absolutely no difference in my breasts at all.

And it’s one of the things that I have been concerned about these few years on that mammograms are not to be put across just because you have a lump. I think theres not enough information about the many different cancers that are breast cancer;

So in your case you would really strongly recommend that women have mammograms because you wouldn’t have found yours;

Yes I do, I think it saved my life, probably. And I also think one of the things I do, or I have expressed to others is that it’s important to have mammograms at whatever age. And I did read some, there was some research which suggested we shouldn’t have so many mammograms. Well in my case I’m afraid it saved my life and I think that it must be gotten across to women and to men that it’s not necessarily about feeling a lump. Because I think it gives the wrong messages out. One wouldn’t want to alarm people, but I think it’s important. If you have the opportunity, go for a mammogram;

Well, they sent me the usual leaflet that they send out. I know it’s been modified since but, to be honest, not very much. No, because I think I had trust in the notion that they wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t any good. It seemed too preposterous to think that they would summons millions of women to give them a mammogram if there wasn’t some benefit in doing it;

In retrospect, of course, I think quite differently about these things because I am one of the screens where something was found;

Certainly because it was responsible. It’s there; they’re offering it. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they didn’t know what they were doing. And I think trust comes into it more than anything else; trust in the profession;

And since then I haven’t, well since, I can’t remember which year, but certainly for many years I haven’t had another mammogram because do I want to find ductal carcinoma in situ again?

Bearing in mind that most breast cancers are found by the women themselves anyway, and bearing in mind that I know a thing or two now, what is the window of opportunity for finding something that might be significant? I prefer to take a more sort of sane and balanced view about going and looking for trouble. So either I will or I won’t, if I get a recurrence, find it in sufficient time. It depends upon the sort of cancer I may or may not get. It might be a tiny, aggressive one, which will be curtains anyway so what good would a screening have done? It might be another ductal carcinoma in situ, which will take another thirty years to get anywhere significant so, bearing in mind how old I am [laughing] does that matter? I think not;

I think each type of screening has to be looked at very thoroughly in its own context and theres no 2 types of screening that are the same. Angela Raffles described cervical screening so clearly and I think, when you say cervical screening the thing that pops into my head is the economic aspect of it. I can’t remember all the figures but millions of women years, certainly to save a life without any doubt, but all those other grades of cancer that have worried the wits out of thousands of women. Again the downside of screening, without adequate initial information so that a woman at the outset can make up her mind whether to go or not;

That’s a whole different set of parameters to judge. And when you think of the money and effort that’s been spent on all that, yes, it’s produced benefit but how often do we look at the, both the personal cost and the financial cost of doing that? Is it the best of way of tackling that problem? I don’t know the answers but I know what the questions are. And then again, I think prostate cancer is the one that intrigues me more than anything because when I think of the shortcomings of the PSA test and the terrible dilemmas it can put both patients and doctors in when they find, let’s say a slightly elevated, what does it mean? We don’t really know what it means so you’ve got a whole series of uncertainties and decisions to make which I think is a horrible thing to impose on men;

And I wish they would look at the economics of it [breast screening], too, because, you know, ’57 million I think it is a year, for what; I’m not quite sure, it’s a bit scary. It could be better spent, I feel;

So it does raise questions about whether it’s [breast screening] really a good thing, because what I discovered, I’m jumping around here, but after I got the diagnosis I went away and rushed around trying to understand about this strange DCIS, to discover that in the medical world it wasn’t free from controversy about what to do about it, because it’s thought that some, maybe a lot of DCIS, never develops into breast cancer proper anyway. And so the shock of having a mastectomy proposed for some early form of breast cancer, that might not even develop into breast cancer anyway, was just adding to it all.

But I have thought, because I’d been told that my risk of developing DCIS in the other breast is now greater than if I hadn’t had it at all, I think three times greater, I have thought – although I think I would go for screening of the other breast – if they tell me I’ve got DCIS, now I’ve understood the condition a bit more, now that I’ve demonstrated to myself that to delay six months didn’t matter if it still wasn’t invasive, the same could be true. And I also have a starting point because I know that that breast, when that breast was clear, because my other breast, it was the first mammogram, I had no idea how long that DCIS had been there. Well I will know this time;

So it would be my intention, unless there was very strong, there had been further research and evidence to the contrary, but if they find DCIS this time I will be able to say “Well I’ll wait and well see or well perhaps go for a second mammogram in a couple of years and well see if things have changed much, because its likely to be very slow moving and I could afford to wait.” And I suppose I’ve just proved to myself that I could live with the uncertainty of that too because if I became too troubled by it, it would have to, I would have to reconsider. I think that would be my hope;

But I think now I would make that choice for the other breast but I wouldn’t necessarily go down the path of instant surgery, in fact I’m sure I’d wait and see whether a new treatment by then had been developed or whether my risk was very small;

And then finally I went with my sister, and the surgeon said he was embarrassed because they still didn’t have the results. We said, ‘why?’, And he said ‘they can’t find what they’re looking for. Even though they’ve done, now, considerably more analysis than they ever would. And I said ‘what are they looking for?’ And he said ‘DCIS’, and they couldn’t find any DCIS. They couldn’t find any DCIS in my breast that they had removed. I subsequently had two, possibly three, quite long sessions with the pathologist, looking at my own cells under the microscope, trying to understand why it was that they said they’d found DCIS in the original biopsy, and not being able to find any DCIS in the breast they removed. I’m still not really a hundred percent sure that I understood it, but I can’t think of any other explanation than they removed from my breast in the biopsy the only DCIS cells there were in my whole breast. They were two tiny spots of less than one millimetre. And I had my whole breast and five lymph nodes removed for that;

Which is why I’m deeply concerned about being faced with this white spots diagnosis on my other breast, when even when I was diagnosed with threatening, high grade, wide extensive DCIS, in the end, when they removed my breast, they couldn’t find it at all;

Now I’m on calcium tablets. Well why couldn’t I have been taking these all the time and maybe I’d have never had DCIS in the first place? The other significance about that is, remind me and I’ll come back to the environmental factors, let me finish this thing on HRT. Because I’m not convinced that my DCIS would have turned into invasive cancer, and I’ve removed this HRT risk, I’m hoping, myself, and it can only be a hope, that I’m no more at risk now than anybody else was;

In your own mind, what would be the pros and the cons in terms of going for a mammogram;

The con? Forgiving the pun but the contrary arguments against it, which is why I’m not doing it, is that if they find white spots, more DCIS, I still haven’t made up my own mind about what I think about this diagnosis. And so I don’t want to put myself in the position of having to take a decision about it, until I know what I think about it;

And against that argument, what thoughts are going through your mind about why should…

Well might DCIS, not only DCIS be developing there? And might it be DCIS that will invade, and might there be an invasive lump developing that I’m not aware of? Though I do occasionally, not regularly, I do check my breast. Not in any kind of technical way, but I’m breast-aware. And I haven’t actually felt anything. And I suppose in my mind all the time, whenever I do that and there isn’t anything, I can see the thought going through my mind – oh it was probably the HRT that did it, and I’m not taking HR; now, so I should be okay, and I’m past the menopause and all the rest of it. But of course, the longer you get past the menopause the more there seem to be diagnoses of breast cancer, so I’m still confused actually.

But I mean I was always quite vigilant anyway, but then I would never have been able to pick this up because it was, I mean it didn’t show up on a mammogram. It didn’t show on an ultrasound. I mean and that kind of gave me a bit of a problem for quite a long time because I felt "well why am I going back for my check-ups because you cat tell anyway". So, getting my head round that was quite difficult.

But now I have a problem now with going back for my, like I went back for my year check in September, having an ultrasound, a mammogram, coming away being told that I am clear because how do I know, because I was clear the first time. So, I do have a bit of a problem with that;

I mean I do think people should go for screening. But at the moment I need someone to say to me, I think they class Pages, well the DCIS is like pre-cancer rather than a cancer, so eventually it will show up on a mammogram but not until it’s more invasive. So, I think they need to, I think maybe the professionals need to find a way of actually detecting it, you know, before it becomes invasive. And I would just advise people to do their check-ups and to, you know, go for their mammograms and ultrasounds;;