Chances are someone you know is a breast cancer survivor and forWFMY News 2's Tracey McCain that reality hit close to home a few years ago. FONT size=2>Here's her story: /FONT>"It was really devastating for her. She was afraid. We were afraid too," said Rosella Crisp, my aunt.Doctors diagnosed my grandmother, Elizabeth Crisp with breast cancer when she was 69 years old. But no one in my family knew how long she'd actually been suffering from it."It was more like a golf ball on her left side and at the time she didn't want us to know about it. And one day she said come feel this and I did and we discovered that it was that large and it was real scary," my aunt told me."Mom was the sort of person who didn't like to go to doctors if she didn't have to go to doctors,"added my mother MaryMcCain. "I said if you want to live, you have to take some type of treatment."A mastectomy saved my grandmother's life. She survived breast cancer for 15 years before she died of old age at 84.Breast cancer really came close to home when doctors notonly diagnosed my grandmother with the disease, but then finding out later in life that my mom had a scare."I went for a routine mammogram and the doctor told meI have a lump in my breast," my mom told me. It's a secret my mom hid from me and my aunt for years."I didn't want everyone to go through what I was going through," she said.Her doctors advice led her to a lumpectomy. "It was a scare and I think one that a lot of women experience.They go and have a mammogram and it's like you don't know, you really don't know."Knowing that breast cancer is soprominent in my family, I make sure I perform self checks and get an annual mammography."My mom had it when she was 69 and she beat it, she beat it and you can too," said my mom./FONT>/FONT>She offered this advice. "Please go out and have a mammogram not only because it is breast cancer awareness month but because it can save your life."/>
