(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – Earlier this month, a federal panel lowered the recommended age for mammograms for women to 40. A Chicago-area doctor is applauding the recommendation, and sharing her own story of survival.
“Probably more numb than surprised.”
That’s how Dr. Karen Smorowski, a radiation oncologist at City of Hope in Zion, felt after getting her breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 40.
The diagnosis came just a few months after a mammogram showed no signs of cancer, she said.
She listened to her body and asked her doctor to order an MRI, and that’s how the cancer was detected. Smorowski immediately encouraged her sister who was 44 at the time to get screened too.
“About two weeks after I was diagnosed, she was diagnosed with a very early stage breast cancer,” she said.
Following surgery and other treatments, they are both in remission now, and Dr. Smorowski believes lowering the recommended age for breast cancer …