Blindsided by Breast Cancer

When a mammogram hides a deadly truth.

- By Dyan Neary

THE NEGATIVE MAMMOGRAM | A digital mammogram of the right and left breast of a 51-year old patient with dense breast tissue from February 15, 2023. Nothing appears abnormal.

In the middle of the night, Angie McCoy flipped onto her stomach in bed and felt something hard in her right breast.

It was July 2020, and she and her husband, Tim, were staying at a rental house in Texas Hill Country while they waited for the construction of their new home to be finished. She didn't know how to describe the sensation-it wasn't quite a lump, but something about it felt off. It was most pronounced when she lay against a firm surface.

The next day, McCoy made an appointment with a general practitioner, who referred her for a mammogram and an ultrasound. The radiologist told her that both of those scans were negative-he couldn't see anything that indicated cancer. I think we're just dealing with dense breast tissue, he said, adding that she should come back in six months for retesting just to be sure.

Dense breast tissue. This was nothing new: Radiologists had always mentioned that McCoy had dense breasts, but she didn't understand what it meant or why she should care. None of her doctors had ever said this might be cause for concern.

Six months later, in February, she had another mammogram and ultrasound. The doctors, again, said that both were negative. But the hardness in her breast was still there. McCoy ran through possible explanations in her head: At 52, she was perimenopausal, so her breasts would often hurt and were sometimes swollen. Besides, she trusted doctors-her own late father was a radiologist.