What Does It Mean To Be Breast Cancer Aware?

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but doctors said you should be aware of the deadly disease all year long.

Anne O'Brien's mom died of breast cancer at just 48 years old.

"She had it once right away, and then she was cancer-free for a bunch of years. She started getting coughs and she knew something wasn't right, and it had metastasized at that point," O'Brien said.

Her mom, Tyanna, detected the cancer herself when she was just 35 years old.

According to Sandy D. Kotiah, M.D., a board certified medical oncologist, Director of The Neuroendocrine Tumor Center at Mercy and is a member of Medical Oncology and Hematology at Mercy in Baltimore, younger breast cancer patients are becoming more common.

"In the last seven to eight years, we've seen an upsurge of women younger than 40 getting breast cancer, so it's important, because the younger women get the more aggressive breast cancers, and even if they don't, they sit on it for a long time and the cancer has a chance to potentially spread at that point," Dr. Kotiah said.

O'Brien said her mom, grandmother and great-grandmother all had breast cancer, but she hasn't, and neither have her four sisters. But because their mom died so young from the disease, they wanted to make sure people started talking about breast cancer more often.

They're starting by creating an annual event - BreastFest.

"They start seeing BreastFest come around, and they're like, 'Oh, I need to schedule my mammogram,' and that's what we want," O'Brien said.

Dr. Kotiah noted that finding breast cancer early is important.

"For me, as an oncologist, there's very few cancers that we can screen for, catch early (and) prevent, and breast cancer is one of them," she said.

Some people don't go to the doctor right away because they either ignore it, or they're too scared that it is, in fact, breast cancer, Dr. Kotiah explained.

"If you feel something and it's not your norm, and even if you think it's related to your menstrual cycle, it should go away, it should go down after a month, it shouldn't persist and get bigger over time, get it checked out sooner than later," she said.

Dr. Kotiah added that if you do have a strong family history of breast cancer, it's even more important to get screened early and get on the same page with your doctor about any type of scans or planning you may need to do.

View Mercy medical oncologist Dr. Sandy Kotiah's interview regarding breast cancer.