November 24th, 2009

Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News reports:

BY EVEN the most aggressive standard of preventive care, Cheryl’s cancer would not have been found by “routine mammography” in 2006.

Mammograms were not the recommended routine for any healthy woman under 40. She was 36. Nor did she fit any of the risk categories that trigger yearly exams for women younger than 40.

My daughter, Cheryl Arnold, discovered her tumor, literally by accident.

She was flying home after a visit with her mother and me when a stewardess dropped a bag from an overhead bin. It hit her on her chest, leaving a bruise that did not heal with time.

Even after a needle aspiration biopsy and an ultrasound, the lump was diagnosed as a blood clot. If her husband, Aric, had not been coming home from Egypt on leave, she may not have had the mammogram.

Read more: Philadelphia Daily News