I learned from my own diagnosis you can still get breast cancer with no family history

• Because I didn't have any family history of breast cancer, I put off getting checked.
• I was watching TV with my daughter when I felt a lump on my breast.

I have a confession to make: Before I had breast cancer, I believed that since I didn't know any female relatives who had it, it wasn't something I needed to worry about.

Like most people, I'd read stories about celebrities like Angelina Jolie who had a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation. I thought I was lucky breast cancer didn't run in my family.

I held so much faith in this belief I put off having a mammogram in 2020, when I was 45 years old. (New US Preventative Task Force guidelines recommend women start getting regular mammograms at 40.) I was working at a freelance editing job and "just didn't have the time to take off." When the assignment ended and my schedule opened up, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly around the New York City area, and I told my husband there was no way I was going anywhere near a hospital at that point.

I felt a bump in my breast

My husband and daughter both have asthma, so as COVID-19 spread, my own health was the last thing on my mind. After all, I was in great shape; I was a healthy eater and ran almost every day. Aside from a yearly checkup, I hadn't been to the doctor for anything more than a sinus infection in years.

Then, one night a few weeks into the first lockdown, I was sitting on the couch with my teenage daughter, binge-watching a show on the Food Network when I adjusted my sports bra. As I tucked my thumb under the left outer side of the fabric, my finger grazed something unexpected, and my blood turned cold.

I quickly pulled my hand away and tried to convince myself it was nothing. Breasts are bumpy, I told myself. I was being ridiculous. There was no way I felt something. How could I have a lump? Even if I did, there is no way it would happen a few weeks into a pandemic when doctors' offices were closed and no one was performing elective procedures — would it?

I tried to push the thought away, but by the time I went to bed that night, I couldn't get the idea out of my mind. Just before I changed into my pajamas, I ran my finger over the side of my left breast again, just to be sure. I expected to feel nothing — and then I hit the spot. The mass, the size of a large pea, was clearly defined, and it seemed unlike any tissue I'd ever felt in my breast before.

I called my husband upstairs and asked him to feel it. And it wasn't until I saw his expression that it really sunk in — it was a lump.

I had breast cancer

What followed was a frantic night emailing my primary-care doctor and Googling things like, "What does a cancerous breast lump feel like?" and "How can you tell if a breast lump is cancer?"

According to my Google deep dive, 80% of lumps turn out to be benign. Surely, mine would be one of those. Surely, if I were going to get cancer, it wouldn't happen at the worst possible time.

The next morning, my primary-care doctor texted every breast surgeon she knew, begging them to see me, and one finally agreed. Two days later, when I went to the hospital for a biopsy — where police were outside turning visitors away and staff members were dressed in PPE — I still didn't believe the lump would be malignant.

When the doctor called a few days later with the results, I even asked him to repeat himself. "The tumor is cancerous," he said again.

Sitting in his office a few hours later, I would ask, "But how can I have cancer when no one in my family ever has?"

Most people who get breast cancer don't have family history

He had no definitive answer as to why I got breast cancer, but he did share one fact I had never heard before. One in eight women will be diagnosed in their lifetime; of those, only 5% to 10% of breast cancers are hereditary. In other words, most women who are diagnosed have no family history of the disease.

After I was diagnosed, testing confirmed I didn't have the gene mutations that put me at a higher risk of developing breast cancer. Fortunately, my tumor was stage one and the cancer hadn't spread, but if I hadn't found the lump or had put off having the mammogram another few months, my prognosis would have been very different. Had I been more informed, I would have prioritized my mammograms.

Now, I encourage women to make sure they get checked. Breast cancer doesn't wait because your schedule is busy. All women should understand that no matter their genetics, they are at risk, and the earlier cancer is detected, the greater the chance of a better outcome.

Darcey Gohring is a freelance writer and editor. She specializes in personal narratives and memoirs. Visit darceygohring.com to learn more about her work.