Government

Senator and breast cancer survivor, Dr Saphire Longmore, is encouraging persons

who notice lumps in their bodies to go and have them checked immediately.

Longmore

said that quick action can mean the difference between life and death.

“If you

discover an unusual mass in the body, you should act quickly. Go and see a

physician without delay. Immediately try to get a biopsy, which is where they

take a small piece of the tissue and send it to the laboratory to see what the

constituents of the mass are,” she explained.

Longmore,

who is a medical doctor, suggested that persons should use the days or weeks

leading up to the doctor’s appointment and the time in the waiting room “to

think of everything you would want to know.”

“Write down

your questions and go in there for the precious few minutes that you have and

ask the relevant questions,” she said.

Some of the

important questions that she suggests are: What might this be? What do I do

next? How much does it cost? What do I do to prevent it?

Longmore

said that it is also very important to pay attention to the body and to be

mindful of changes however slight they may be. In relating her own experience,

she said that she had done a breast self-examination about two months before

she found the lump “and it was not there at the time.”

“So, my

advice is to do your examinations on a regular basis and pay attention to your

body. I was having very subtle changes in my breasts, which I just attributed

to pre-menstrual syndrome. I knew that something was happening when I realised

that the timing was off and this was just around the time that I found the

lump,” she noted.

Longmore

said that based on her clinical experience, she immediately knew what she was

feeling.

“It was a

very difficult moment. Initially, I went numb, but I acted immediately. You

have to just take the bull by the horns and deal with it,” she advised.