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HEALTH

She's 34, with no family history of breast cancer. How a self-exam may have saved her life

Maggie Menderski
Louisville Courier Journal

Jessica Barr was about six years away from scheduling her first mammogram when she found a lump in her left breast.

No one in her family had ever had breast cancer. She was just 34. She had an 8-year-old son.

As far as she knew, she wasn’t at high risk for the disease.

But as she stood in the shower in May with that lump beneath her fingers, she knew she had to do something.  

Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October is about more than pink ribbons and promotions — it’s about early detection and survival. When Barr told me her story a few weeks ago, it was clear to me she was the embodiment of both.

She went to see her primary care doctor the next afternoon. Her doctor encouraged her to go for a screening because she expected Barr would never be comfortable until she had that mass in her chest checked. 

Jessica Barr learned that she had cancer at age 34. She hopes to inspire others to get their own mammograms before the traditional age of 40. Oct. 19, 2021

Barr agreed, and she scheduled a mammogram and an ultrasound for a week or so later.

Typically the next step in a possible breast cancer diagnosis is a biopsy, but the results from the imaging were so clear that she had an entirely different conversation with the radiologist.

She had breast cancer.

Barr certainly isn’t the first uncharacteristically young patient to come into Dr. Blakely Kute’s office at the Norton Cancer Institute without a family history of breast cancer. About 10% of all breast cancer patients have a family link, Kute explained, but there’s another 90% who don’t.

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Barr was too young to have an annual mammogram on the calendar. Kute says breasts are often too dense in a woman's 20s and 30s to detect abnormalities through imaging.

The 30-something was smart, however, to keep an eye on her own health and astute enough to bring a change to her doctor. Often patients don’t schedule tests or talk to a doctor because they’re afraid of getting bad news.

But not knowing you have breast cancer doesn’t keep the tumors from growing and spreading.

“It’s not that (a mammogram) is painful, but they’re scared they’ll find something,” Kute explained. “But really, if we find it early, it’s so, so, so much better than if it sits there and grows for years.”

The first few weeks after the imaging were the most frightening, Barr told me. She went through a painful limbo between learning she had cancer and figuring out what her treatment options were. She prayed for peace. At that moment, there wasn't much else she could do. 

Jessica Barr learned that she had cancer at age 34. She hopes to inspire others to get their own mammograms before the traditional age of 40. Oct. 19, 2021

Eventually she learned that she had stage 2 breast cancer and BRCA gene mutation, which is a genetic calling card of sorts for high-risk breast cancer.

Her mother is a colon cancer survivor, and her father died from prostate cancer four years ago. Until her own diagnosis, she had no idea there was a connection between BRCA genes, prostate cancer and breast cancer, but the three are linked. That's a message that she's pushed out among friends, family and colleagues since her own diagnosis. Had she known about the relationship between breast and prostate cancer, she might have gone for genetic testing. She could have found her own cancer even more quickly than she did.

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Having watched both her parents fight cancer, she knew better than to check survival rates.

Her mother hadn’t been given great odds, but now she's 11 years on the other side. Meanwhile, prostate cancer has a relatively high rate of survival, and Barr ended up giving a eulogy at her father's funeral much too soon.  

“You need to focus on what your current situation is and what the doctors are saying and not look at the current statistics,” she told me. “It doesn’t really matter, someone’s could be really, really low, and they still make it, like my mom.”

After her father died, Barr and her husband moved next door to her mom to be more present for her. That "care" situation needed to be flipped, though, when she started chemotherapy in July. 

Jessica Barr learned that she had cancer at age 34. She hopes to inspire others to get their own mammograms before the traditional age of 40. Oct. 19, 2021

Her mom has always been her best friend, but now she was the one sitting with her through treatments. Cancer is awful, but it's oddly nice to have some extra quality time with her mom, Barr said. In a strange way, she enjoys  those afternoons when she's receiving radiation because they just can enjoy each other's company. 

Sometimes, though, it looks like she's brought her office with her to the hospital. Through it all, Barr hasn’t taken any time off from her job in construction project management. That would have been a huge blow, she said — she loves her job.

Often you can find her at the hospital with a laptop open or chatting with architects on the phone. She's managed to make it work, and her husband and her family have been incredibly supportive. 

But there was one part of her family that Barr was very concerned about when this all began. At first, she wrestled with how much to tell her son about her diagnosis. He was old enough to have heard the word cancer, but at 8-years-old, he didn’t fully understand what it meant.

Before her treatments started, they explained that Barr was sick and that their family may have to modify some of the things that they normally do. They wouldn’t be able to do every fun activity, but they could do some of them.

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“We tell him that things are going well and that the prognosis is good, and the doctors do what they can and that things are going well,” she explained.

And for the most part, they are.

The day before I spoke to Barr, she’d taken her son to a pumpkin patch. They went on a Monday when it was less crowded and they socially distanced, but they were still able to go.

She found a lot of joy this summer watching her little boy play soccer, but Barr has to keep him out of basketball this winter. The coronavirus pandemic presents another layer of complications, and outdoor sports are much safer than indoor sports where everyone crams onto bleachers.

Jessica Barr learned that she had cancer at age 34. She hopes to inspire others to get their own mammograms before the traditional age of 40. Oct. 19, 2021

Cancer is hard as it, she says, but living through it in a pandemic has been doubly challenging. She and her husband had only been vaccinated long enough to have a few carefree dinners at restaurants before she felt that lump and went for the mammogram. She craves a sense of normalcy, but she's also smart about keeping herself safe. 

Her life has changed dramatically, but if there is a silver lining to this, she says, it’s that she’s been able to spend some quality time with her mom. Her friends and colleagues, too, have also latched on to her story and started paying more attention to their own breast health.

One woman went for a mammogram after hearing what happened to Barr, and she found her own cancer earlier than she would have otherwise.

“I really just hope that people are doing their monthly exams if they’re under 40, and getting their yearly screenings if they’re able to do that,” Barr said. “Then they can get diagnosed early.”

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On the afternoon we spoke, Barr still had five chemotherapy treatments ahead of her, and once she finished those, she was headed for a double mastectomy.

Her journey isn’t over yet, but the end of it seems much closer than it did when she first felt that lump in May.

When she has down days, she remembers what her dad used to tell her.

If you don’t think you make it through one day, then just take one hour at a time.

If you can’t take one hour at a time, take one minute at a time.

And if you can’t take one minute, take one second at a time.

“My mom says that to me all the time now when things are hard or getting tough,” she told me. “She reminds me of that all the time. I think that’s an important takeaway.”

Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you've got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com or 502-582-7137. Follow along on Instagram and Twitter @MaggieMenderski.