How doctor battled breast cancer then menopause, and found love along the way
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Her most recent routine scan had turned up nothing untoward. Given the all-clear, she went off on a camping trip with her children to climb
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa's highest peak.
It was on this trip in late 2013 that she felt a large mass in her breast.
The
routine mammogram had not picked up the cancer because Larkin had very
dense breasts ; as many as 40 to 50 per cent of women have them.
Larkin and her children celebrate climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2013. But it was on this trip that she first felt a large mass in her breast. Photo: Facebook/UCHealthCincinnati
Breasts are made up of two types of tissue: glandular tissue and fatty tissue. If your tissue is more glandular than fatty, you have dense breasts.
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On a mammogram, dense tissue appears white when compared to fatty tissue. Abnormal growths also tend to be dense and white, so imaging of dense tissue does not always show a potentially cancerous lump.
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