LONGVIEW, Texas — 250,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The most important thing that I can tell everybody, now that I've been there and done that, is to go have your mammogram done," Shelly Saxon, a breast cancer survivor, said.
Shelly was just 44-years-old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. According to the CDC, 11% of all new cases in the U.S. are in women under the age of 45.
"When I turned 40, me and my mom would go and have our exams done once a year and we would make fun of it," she said. "We would go out to eat and do it together. And then my fourth one, when I was 44, the summer of 2019, I went to go have my mammogram done and something bad showed up."
Saxon did not have any family history of cancer and because of this, she almost didn't have a procedure done, that ended up saving her life.
"Shelly was my patient," Rebekah Clement, a technologist at CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Breast Center, said. "She came in and I did her screening, mammogram, her diagnostic workup, her ultrasound and her biopsy. She was very reluctant to have her biopsy because she didn't want to spend that kind of money on herself, and so we had to have a very lengthy conversation about how important it was for her to take care of herself."
"The biopsy was costing me a lot of money so I canceled it," Saxon said. "I called and I said, I don't think that I need this because I don't have that in my family. So Rebecca took upon herself, when she you know got a little time she called me when she saw that I had canceled my appointment, and if it had not been for her calling me and sitting on the phone with me for 30 minutes and talked me into going up there, I probably wouldn't be here today."
Now a year later, Saxon is recovering and is officially cancer free as of two weeks ago.
"I know cancer sounds horrible and there's just, it's affected so many people you know day to day, but you know, me going through that showed me a whole different light in life," she said. "You know it makes everything, your perspective on life is just totally different."
Experts suggest that women should start getting yearly mammograms at the age of 40. However, if you have a history of breast cancer or cancer in your family, you should get one even sooner.