New Guidelines or Do you think you were over-treated

o2bhealthy

The entire month of October was all about Breast Cancer Awareness and Early Detection Saves Lives...now two weeks later we get this crap!!!! WTH!!!!  I am 38 - no history - found a pea size lump myself, mammo found two more sites of IDC...I had asked since I was 35 for a baseline mammo and was told 'no, your too young'...

Janets1

For every step forward that women make, there is always a "backlash" that serves to keep us from making true progress. This is very well documented in Susan Faludi's book, "Backlash" which is in its 15th edition. Now that we are saving lives by being proactive and having mammograms, we are being told that the very tools, albeit the only tools, we have are being used too frivolously. If we go for our mammograms regularly, we are labeled as having caused our own cancer! If we subject ourselves to chemo and radiation in order to get rid of cancer cells and prevent them from returning, we are told we are poisoning our bodies. Can we win? I have been tormented by the idea that I am hurting myself by going for radiation for DCIS which may or may not become invasive. Yet I am equally tormented by the idea that if I don't have radiation I will be responsible in 10 years should I get invasive cancer. I know we all have to take responsibility for ourselves and our health, but somehow it shouldn't be this difficult.

PCB

Exactly!  How insulting, the suggestion that women are "harmed" by false positives!  As my physician told me years ago: IT'S NOT THE FALSE POSITIVES YOU WORRY ABOUT.  IT'S THE FALSE NEGATIVES.

Lovegolf

over-treated?  No I do not think I was, but I do hope this is question I keep getting aksed for many years to come.

Trace

This is NOT Obama-care....this task force was appointment by the Bush administration.

 I am 45 and have a 6 cm lesion of DCIS grade 2 with necrosis and I will undergo a mastectomy in 3 weeks.  Although, I agonized over my treaments choices, I feel that this is the safest way for me to go.  I was a fan of Dr Susan Love - I used to work with her back in Boston - and I am completely confused regarding her thinking.  I feel I am CLEARLY the 1 person who has benefitted from a mammogram in her 40's.  The DCIS was found on a routine mammogram - only the 2nd one I'd ever had.

catherine7273

Just FYI - - Dr. Love has a patent pending on a new technology that will be used to diagnose breast cancer:  http://www.imaginis.com/breasthealth/ductal_lavage.asp

I heard about it from a poster on a YSC discussion board -- I will let you all draw your own conclusions.