A Montreal woman who was told by health-care professionals that she was too young for breast cancer but later diagnosed with it, has died from the disease. Valerie Buchanan was 32 when she died at the end of February.

A Montreal woman who was told by health-care professionals that she was too young for breast cancer but later diagnosed with it, has died from the disease. Valerie Buchanan was 32 when she died at the end of February.

“I keep asking myself why anyone, but selfishly, why her?” Chris Scheepers, Buchanan’s husband told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview. “She was a beautiful person. She was extremely driven, talented and positive. What really breaks me is our son won’t know the truly remarkable woman she was.”

Throughout 2020, Buchanan sought answers for a lump in her chest but had said she was reassured by multiple health-care professionals in Ottawa and Montreal that it was a benign cyst without sending her for imaging to confirm.

After 13 months, Buchanan eventually went to a private clinic and was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer – a biologically aggressive subtype of breast cancer. Just a few months later, she learned it was Stage 4.

    • Signtist@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      12 hours ago

      That’s… not true, at least not in 2017 when this happened. Yes, a double mastectomy is an available option, and is the one most commonly taken due to the high risk, but another option, at least in the US at the time, is to have yearly mammograms. Often women want to keep their breasts until they have children and get through breastfeeding, then have a double mastectomy as well as an oophorectomy due to the high ovarian cancer risk that also comes with a BRCA1 mutation. I haven’t kept up with recommendations since leaving the field in 2019, but at least back then, there were more than one option, and I’d be surprised if it’s been constricted to a forced double mastectomy since then.

        • Signtist@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Ah, you’re talking about the news story. Sorry, since you replied to my comment, I thought you were talking about the story I shared, which is of a different person. The woman from the news story wasn’t diagnosed with a familial cancer condition like a BRCA mutation. Also, it’s important to note that while a double mastectomy would definitely be recommended in the case of a BRCA1 mutation, ultimately the patient obviously gets the final decision on what they go with. It’s important to offer it, of course, but it’s not something to be forced on a person, regardless of the benefits. People have more going on in their life than what a doctor sees in their office, and can sometimes have something of even greater importance going on at the moment. Treatment is always a discussion to have with the patient, not a decision made on their behalf.