Local nurse shares experience with breast cancer in hopes of helping other women

DAYTON — As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, a local nurse is sharing her story in hopes highlighting the importance of early detection.

Tracy Evans is a nurse a Kettering Health Dayton, formally Grandview Medical Center. Even with her medical background, Evans told News Center 7′s Candace Price that she was shocked when she found out she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I was like ‘Do I feel this?’ I was feeling it from different directions,” Evans said.

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Evans said she performed breast exams on herself regularly and thought she would know if she felt something wrong.

“I thought it’s going to feel like a perfectly round pea or a marble, or even a golf ball if its bigger,” Evans said.

Instead, she said it felt more like “a glob of tissue.”

“I could feel it one direction and it would raise up. I could feel it another direction and it would raise up,” Evans said.

Doubting it could be cancer, she said it took her four to six weeks to go see a doctor.

“I had already talked myself into thinking ‘I’m only 35,’” Evans said.

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She thought it felt like an early stage of cancer, but she was already at stage 3 cancer, with three masses in her breast.

“I had a one-year-old son I had been breastfeeding prior to that, so I had a lot of changes,” Evans said.

Now in remission, Evans said she credits her medical team’s persistence in her diagnosis and treatment.

She hopes her story will help other women and urges anyone to seek out a medical professional if they are unsure if they feel something abnormal during a breast exam.

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