Early Diagnosis Key In Beating Cancer For Orchard Woman

By Natalie Bruzon
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Breast cancer can change a woman’s life forever.

So can early detection.

Sally Finch of Orchard remembers the day she was diagnosed with Breast cancer four years ago, and thanks early detection for the positive ending to her story. 

“I’d been getting regular mammograms since the age of 30,” said Finch, “because my mom had breast cancer. She actually had a mastectomy. She didn’t do treatments or anything, it was all just there in the breast so that’s all she had done. So I’d always been diligent about doing my mammograms.”

For years, Finch went in for her mammograms with nothing unusual showing up. During her first digital mammogram, doctors saw something to cause concern.
 
“A digital mammogram is much more clear, they can see everything on it better,” explained Finch. “The quality of it is what’s really different. 

Finch was asked to come back.

“I was asked to come back and have a more intense (mammogram), where they just look at that specific area and zoom into it more,” Finch said. “So I had to go to Lincoln to do that. What they call it is calcification, where these little spots. Then they said they wanted to do a biopsy. They said that a big percentage of them aren’t anything, they’re just calcifications. But they still wanted to do the biopsy. When it came back, lo and behold it was cancerous.”

Cancer is a scary word, and the stage of the cancer tells a lot about what the woman’s future will look like. 
For Finch, it was all good news. 

“(My cancer) was a stage zero, that’s what they call it. The stages go from zero to four, so mine was really early,” said Finch. 

Because her cancer was at such an early stage, Finch did not have to do a mastectomy. “When they do the biopsy they actually insert these little markers, so when they do the lumpectomy they can see those markers on the screen while they’re in (the cancerous area) and they know that those are the spots to take for the lumpectomy. They did that and then they take some and check the edges to make sure that there’s nothing more showing up. And they do all that while you’re under.”

For Finch, all the edges came back clear, but the doctors still recommended she do radiation because of the cancerous cells which had already been in her body. 

“So I went to Norfolk for my radiation treatments because it was closer for me to drive to Norfolk,” said Finch. “Every morning I had the second radiation treatment of the day scheduled. So I could get my treatment and drive back to work. I never actually missed a day of work.”

Following her radiation, Finch went in for mammograms every six months for the first two, and when those came back clear she went back to her regular annual mammograms. 

As Finch said, “I was very, very fortunate because it was caught so early and everything worked out perfectly for me to be able to do the treatments and still be able to work every day.”

Not every woman’s story with breast cancer is as positive as Finch’s, and her’s could have ended differently had it not been for early detection. 

“It seems like you could put (mammograms) off,” concluded Finch, “but it’s so much easier to have them done now than to look back and say, ‘Oh, I wish I would’ve gotten my mammogram.’”