00:00 10 to 15 percent of breast cancer diagnoses are lobular breast cancer, but it's a little
00:08 bit different from the one that we all know about that forms a lump and that we are told
00:15 to check for and that will show up on mammograms.
00:19 So lobular breast cancer just forms in a slightly different way.
00:22 It forms in these long strings of cells.
00:25 It can sometimes form a type of a mass, but it has this distinct growth pattern where
00:31 it infiltrates into the tissue and that can just make it much harder to feel and much
00:39 harder to pick up on a mammogram.
00:41 I was very lucky in a weird way to have these two types of cancers at the same time.
00:49 So the lobular cancer that I had was picked up by a pathologist who was looking at the
00:54 tissue under a microscope, but I couldn't feel any of it.
01:00 Other women do sometimes feel things, so that's why it is really important that women know
01:07 not to just check for lumps.
01:09 You must check for any kind of change in your breast.
01:13 Maybe there's a slight thickening of the tissue or it can cause a distortion where the skin
01:19 pulls in or the nipple pulls in.
01:21 There might be some discharge, that kind of thing.
01:26 So any of those kinds of changes are what women need to look out for.
01:31 And then if they have those images and they're still worried about something, pursue it further.
01:37 Go to your GP and ask for more imaging because you can now also have contrast imaging.
01:43 You can have a contrast enhanced mammogram or an MRI, and those are better at detecting
01:49 it.
01:50 So there's a fine balance, of course, between being the worried well and pursuing something
01:58 that you think is not quite right.
02:02 Unfortunately, these contrast images, they're not publicly funded.
02:07 You can get an MRI if you're a very high risk group and that's publicly funded.
02:13 Otherwise you are going to have to fund those images yourself, but that's the way to pursue
02:22 it.
02:23 If you're very, very worried about something and you still feel like you need to have it
02:27 checked out, then that imaging is the way to go.
02:31 Of course, if that gives you the all clear, then you can feel much more confident that
02:38 maybe it's not something to worry about.
02:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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