My mom died of breast cancer when she was just 51. A lot of other people in my family have been diagnosed with cancer, too. So, I always kind of expected it might happen to me.

Still, I was caught off-guard when I felt a lump in my left breast last September during a bath. When my mother felt a lump in her breast back in 1996, the chief surgeon at the hospital where she worked examined her immediately. He told her it was malignant...