MILLCREEK, Utah — With October kicking off Breast Cancer Awareness Month, troubling numbers show younger women are getting diagnosed at a higher rate.
Lisa Tecklenburg was just 35 years old when she was changing after a workout and noticed an indentation in her breast.
"They sent me for an immediate mammogram," said the Olympus Cove resident. "I was really lucky that they took me seriously."
Doctors discovered a 10-centimeter tumor and diagnosed Tecklenburg with advanced-stage breast cancer. It's something happening to more and more women under the age of 50, according to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society.
"When you’re young, you think, 'Oh, it happens when you’re older and like I’ll get more diligent later,' but the reality is when you’re younger you need to catch it earlier because it moves fast," she warned.
Tecklenburg believes it's important to learn how to do a good self-examination as well as talk to your doctor.
"You want to know early," she said. "You want to know. It’s so much better. And I know it’s so scary.
"Take a deep breath. Even if it is cancer. It is better to find it early, so do your screenings, it is worth it to find it early and it's so, so treatable and so much less invasive if you catch it early."
Still wanting children at the time of her diagnosis, Tecklenburg chose to freeze her eggs before she started her fight.
"[I] literally drove from the fertility clinic to the chemotherapy clinic to shutdown my ovaries and start chemo three days later," she explained, "and we had to use a surrogate to get our one-and-only daughter here and it was a long journey, but it is nothing to be ashamed of."
Her daughter, Louise, was named after Lisa's great-grandmother, a two-time breast cancer survivor.
"Be your own advocate," said Tecklenburg. "Fight for what you need. If you find something, you get that mammogram, you get that biopsy, like try to call and get the earlier appointment.
