Breast Cancer at 26: Young Woman’s Dismissed Concerns
Andrea de Armas was 26 and about to begin a physician assistant training program when she found a lump in her breast. She had no family history of breast cancer. But her visit to a diagnostic imaging clinic left her rattled: in a waiting room full of older patients getting routine scans, she felt the medical technician had already decided she did not belong there.
“The tech had ‘Why are you here?’ vibes,” De Armas recalled. Without saying it outright, she said, the message came through clearly. “I felt belittled and just weird.”
Then the scan reached a radiologist, and the trajectory of her care changed in an instant: the doctor immediately ordered a biopsy. The result was breast cancer.
A Lump, a Dismissive Exam, and a Biopsy
De Armas’s story, featured by CBS News on Saturday, lands at the heart of a long-running problem: young women whose symptoms are not taken seriously because of their age. The dismissive encounter she described came before any doctor had reviewed her scan — a judgment rendered, she felt, on the basis of her youth alone.
It was the radiologist’s quick call for a biopsy that turned the visit around. That decision set in motion the diagnosis and treatment plan that ultimately saved her life.
The Mutation That Explained Everything
Further testing after her diagnosis revealed something De Armas had not expected: she carries a genetic mutation linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. With no known family history, the finding still managed to bring her a measure of peace.
“It was a bit of relief, in the sense of understanding where this could have come from, and that there were things out of my control,” she said. The knowledge also felt empowering for her family, she added, because it means relatives can seek the screenings they need and get ahead of the disease.
She underwent a lumpectomy and then shaped her treatment around her schooling, arriving at early-morning chemotherapy sessions before her classes began. Now 30 and cancer-free, De Armas has finished her education and started her career as a physician assistant — though she still requires regular follow-ups and ongoing hormone therapy.
Breast Cancer in Younger Women
About one in 10 new breast cancer diagnoses occur in women under 45, according to the American Cancer Society, while only about one in 1,344 women are diagnosed in their 20s. Incidence has been climbing roughly one percent per year, and more new cases are now being diagnosed in women under 50 than in those above 50.
Younger patients also tend to be diagnosed at a later stage and with more aggressive or rarer tumor types, according to Dr. Mary Gemignani, director of the Women’s Early Onset Cancer Program and chief of the Division of Breast Surgery at NYU Langone, who was not involved in De Armas’s care. In a 2025 interview with CBS News, Gemignani said she has heard the story many times: “I’ve seen many women over the years who will give the story that they were told they were too young to have breast cancer.”
De Armas’s message to other young women is simple: trust your intuition and keep pushing for answers. Her persistence, she said, is what got her the scan, the biopsy, and the diagnosis in time.
Source: CBS News