According to The American Cancer Society, one in every eight women will be diagnosed each year with breast cancer. While that particular statistic was not a great shock to me at the time of my diagnosis because of my history of medical reporting, there was something I found terribly frightening. For all of us. The fastest growing population of breast cancer patients is women under 40.

One of my contemporaries, Janet Kramer Mai of Trenton, Georgia, tells me, "There's not a day that goes by I'm not scared about what's going to happen."

Janet was diagnosed last fall at age 37.

This perky, wide-eyed mother of three represents the new face of breast cancer. Once considered mainly a post-menopausal disease affecting older women, breast cancer is fast becoming a major threat to women under 40.

Janet admits, " The thought of my three boys growing up without me is devastating to me."

Yet the threat is real. Despite significant progress in treating breast cancer, the death rate remains much the same as it did decades ago. Doctors say forty percent of those diagnosed will die within ten years.

"It's a real problem, "says Dr. Larry Schlabach. He's an oncologist with University Oncologists of Chattanooga and North Georgia.

Dr. Schlabach calls the increasing number of young breast cancer patients coming through their officers disturbing.

"You don't want to create a panic in a community, but you see a young woman come thru at age 30. Gynocologists will tell you they may see 10 lesions, and one out of 10 is malignant, so the odds are against it being anything serious," Schlabach shakes his head. "However, we see it when these supposedly low risk women come through, and often times it's that situation where they think it's something benign and something gets biopsied as cancer."

All to that the fact that some doctors are often reluctant, or simply don't think to search for breast cancer in younger women, and it's no wonder you often end up with a later stage diagnosis in this particular age group well after the lump is first felt. Exactly what happened to Janet Kramer Mai.

She says she found a lump in her breast, want to her doctor who could not feel what she could feel. A mammogram found nothing, but she knew the lump was there so she persisted, going to yet another doctor who did an ultrasound.

Finally, after visiting three doctors over an 11 month period, Janet learned she had breast cancer.

"It was tough, "admits Janet. "I knew the lump was there and they were trying to tell me it was nothing."

By then the cancer had spread beyond the breast. Her treatment, like for most women her age, would be brutal. Dr. Schlabach is Janet's oncologist. He says breast cancer in younger, pre or peri menopausal women is always treated more aggressively than in older women.

"Whether it's because of lat diagnosis or just the more biologically aggressive malignancy, you have to treat the young patients more aggressively. So we end up often doing quite a bit more aggressive therapies on them than someone in a post menopausal setting."

For the first time, I'm talking with Janet in her work setting. Her job makes her case especially notable. Janet is an oncology nurse, AND the breast health educator at a Chattanooga medical center. She looks breast cancer in the face every day. Not everyone in her situation could do that, or even want to, but Janet says for her, it's therapeutic. She feels it makes her a better nurse. " I think I was ok at it before, but now that it's first hand knowledge I think this is the best place for me. I can make a difference in these women's lives. I can tell them what to expect with chemo and surgery and radiation and hormones and weight gain, and all those things we have to think about."

That felling of usefulness is often what kept her going through her chemo therapy and radiation treatments. "If I didn't feel so great, or I wanted to stay in bed, I always thought, 'Maybe there's one woman in there I have to see today.' And I'd go to work, you know. I hope I'm able to help out and touch a lot of women for many years." She laughs at her choice of words. "For many, many, MANY years!"

But even with a sense of satisfaction about her job and her place at Erlanger Medical Center, Janet admits it's her children she thinks about most often. Three strapping, dark-haired boys, ages 4, 6, and 10 at the time of her diagnosis.

"Birthdays. Holidays. You look at your children. You wonder 'Am I going to be here for the next birthday? Am I going to be here for the next Christmas? Am I going to see them graduate?' You know, 'How old will I be when I maybe have to face a recurrence of this disease?' So it's an emotional roller coaster ride."

Which is much of the reason Janet decided to use her cancer to help other local families.

She recently started the Kids Count support group for children of parents with cancer. "It's peers helping peers. It's kids helping kids through this process, and when we pull these kids together, the kids in this room at the Ronald McDonald House, kinda like you and me, they know what each other is having to experience thru this." The children gather once a month at the Ronald McDonald House on Central Avenue. Most, but not all of them, like Janet's sons and mine, children of moms treated for breast cancer.

The support group can help answer many questions for these children. Why does my mom have to lose her hair? Why does the chemo make her sick? What is cancer?

But one question neither Janet, nor oncologists can answer for these kids right now is WHY?

Why breast cancer? Why their moms? And why the dramatic increase in women so young? Research continues.

In the meantime, early detection is our single largest defense against this killer cancer. This is especially important in young women under 40 who don't receive regular mammograms. Breast health educators say you need to start doing those monthly self exams early. College age is NOT too soon.

In response to the growing number of young mothers and single women diagnosed with breast caner, Y-Me of Chattanooga is sponsoring a special support group for women with breast cancer under 40. It meets the 2nd Thursday of each month at the Child Advocacy Center on Vine St. in Chattanooga. That number is: 495-7724. Or you can log on to http://www.y-me.org/affiliates.

I am also proud to announce the formation of the FIRST-EVER scholarship fund for children who have lost a parent to cancer. It is the Children of Breast Cancer Scholarship Fund®, founded by me especially for children who have lost a mother (parent) to breast cancer. It is administered by the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga. You can find out more at http://www.childrenofbreastcancer.org.

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