All seven groups concluded that the decline in the rate of death from breast cancer is a combination of screening and therapy, and not restricted to one or the other.

The American Cancer Society has it right. I do think mammograms save lives.

Some people think the benefit of screening is huge, and others say that the reduction in death rates is due primarily to adjuvant therapy. No one has known for sure, and although we still don't know for sure, this is the best set of analyses that is possible given the available information.

It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house.
It's really, really true.
A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.

I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.

It's the most lethal cancer there is. The only good thing about it is that, if left untreated, death is relatively quick and pain-free, since this tumor does not form painful metastases in other parts of the body.