First symptoms – Annie

 

Annie, diagnosed with a rare form of inflammatory breast cancer, noticed that her breast was red, hot, painful, and swollen.

Transcript

So, I was starting to see some changes during the month of July 2013. Among other things, the size of my left breast was increasing. As the month evolved, the breast was getting bigger and bigger.  At some point, the breast became painful – it was very painful, warm and red. And at some point, the skin had changed (the appearance). The skin was not as it used to be. But, one morning I was woken up, and there was a lymph node – what I thought was a lymph node, that I was feeling. Then I was questioning myself because I had no idea of what I had, because I always heard that a breast cancer was not painful. Thus, I did not suspect that it could be that.

But at the same time, at 36 I was not part of the high risk target group for breast cancer. I was wondering what I had. I did not think it was serious. But on July 26, 2013 I went to a walk-in clinic because at that time it was really painful and I was wondering. The doctor, that I saw, told me that it could be a mastitis, a breast infection, but that he suspected that it was a rare form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer. And he told me that he was worried. It was a Friday afternoon and he told me: “It is a private clinic or the emergency.” It is not often that a doctor tells you that he is worried. So I panicked a little bit.

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