Winnipeg woman shares story of breast cancer diagnosis

Rebecca was in the shower when she first noticed a lump in her breast last May.

At 25, she didn't know a lot about breast cancer but she knew to call her doctor and make an appointment. 

"I went and saw him a week later," said Rebecca. "He said basically that it's probably nothing to worry about, [that] because of my age it's probably really unlikely it's breast cancer. But because I was nervous about it, he would sign me up for an ultrasound."

The ultrasound detected a mass. That led to a biopsy. Then came the cancer diagnosis.

"Being diagnosed was really terrifying," said Rebecca. "I had no knowledge whatsoever of what my treatment would look like at that point and time. It was just entering a very long year of the unknown."

Can happen at any age

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women across the country. In Manitoba, it's estimated that 850 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed last year.

Rebecca's story is an example of how it can happen at any age. 

Rebecca got her diagnosis in mid-June 2014. The next day she was already at CancerCare, meeting with doctors to talk about her options. Her cancer was stage one, but it was aggressive. She knew this was something she didn't want to deal with a second time. 

"What we decided on was a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction," said Rebecca. "So that's what I went for. So this was like a day after being diagnosed so it all happened really quickly"

Rebecca spent a few weeks with her family at the lake before her surgery in July. She started chemotherapy just over a month later.

"It's really difficult," said Rebecca. "There is so much information that tells you to be this positive person and be strong, and be a fighter and all that sort of typical cancer jargon, but I also think you need to allow yourself to be weak when you feel weak." 

'It was really scary'

Rebecca finished chemotherapy in December.

"Honestly it was really scary," said Rebecca. "Especially with breast cancer, there's no remission as they call it. There's no stamp that's like cancer free, but you get put into a category of 'no evidence of disease.'"

Now, 26, Rebecca is still receiving targeted treatment every three weeks.

"You just hope that it worked," said Rebecca. "I was expecting it to be like crossing a finish line and it was more like opening a door to the other side of your life and having no idea what you are going to see."

One thing is certain, she finishes school at the University of Manitoba this semester. She opted not to take a off a semester while undergoing treatment.  

"It was a really great distraction," said Rebecca. "A big part of my having a life was being at school. It really gave me something to look forward to."

Now Rebecca hopes women of any age will check themselves regularly. 

"It's rare, but it's not unknown for young women to get this obviously," said Rebecca. "You need to be on it basically. The sooner you catch it the better."

Research being done in Manitoba

Stephen Pistorius and his team's lab is tucked away in the basement of Allen building at the University of Manitoba. 

The hope is the work that is being done will make detecting breast cancer easier and more accessible to women in Canada, and in developing countries all over the the world.

Pistorius and his team of researchers are exploring the use of a breast microwave detection device. 

According to Pistorius, right now the gold standard for breast cancer screening is looking at X-ray images from mammograms. He hopes the new device could compliment the traditional method.   

"The challenges we have with X-ray systems is that we have a certain set sensitivity, which means we don't detect all lesions," he said. "There are some lesions that will be missed, not very many, but there are some that will be missed using X-ray mammography."

According to Pistorius, there are also some challenges separating malignant lesions (an abnormal change in tissue or organ) from benign lesions, which means some may be getting unnecessary biopsies. 

"So the purpose of this system will help us improve on our sensitivity, hopefully improve on the specificity," said Pistorius.

"But perhaps more than that, because it's a relatively low cost system, it's robust. In other words, we can move it around more easily we feel that this would give women more access to a screening technique then they may currently have with X-ray mammography.

"And this is particularly true for developing countries where they don't have the infrastructure, the manpower, the resources such as we have here in Winnipeg"

Pistorius said since there is no compression involved, the device is also more comfortable to use.

Genetics of cancer

Michael Mowat and his team are located at the CancerCare building in Winnipeg. 

"We are interested in the genetics of cancer, so the genes that mutated that cause cancer," said Mowat. 

Currently his team is looking at a family of genes, including the Dlc-1 gene in breast cancer. According to Mowat, though it was initially found in liver cancer, it's also found mutated in breast, prostate and also lung cancers. 

"We know when cells have this gene mutated they become more motile and they move around in the tissue culture plates much quicker," said Mowat. "So, the equivalent of that inside the human body is the spread of the cancer through the body and ultimately, that's what kills the patients — is the tumour spreading.

"So surgeons can't get it all out, or the chemotherapy or radiation might not get to it either. So that's why we think this gene is important in the spread of cancer." 

Mowat has been involved in research with CancerCare Manitoba since 1985. 

"To find new treatments, we have to understand what these genes do," he said. "Eventually, they are going to sequence every gene in a person's tumour and if they know certain genes are mutated, then they can say we should then treat this patient with a specific drug that targets that gene mutation.

"That's what we are hoping to get from our research ultimately."