Doctors told her she needed more imaging. One sonogram and biopsy later, she had her answer. "It honestly was completely earth-shattering," Eads said. She had never had problems before, and breast cancer does not run in her family.
Eads came to Lubbock in 2005 for graduate school at Texas Tech, where she met her husband, and they have two daughters. She has gone for a mammogram every year since she turned 40.
Because doctors caught the cancer sooner, Eads had a lymphadenectomy last month to remove some lymph nodes and the cancer. A pathologist found clear margins, meaning no cancer cells remain on the outer edge of the removed tissue. So she will get radiation instead of chemotherapy. Her story is ongoing.
Eads wants other women, especially moms, to book their screenings now. "They really are quite inconvenient," she said. Families juggle kids' appointments, jobs and running a household, and she has talked it over with her girlfriends many times since. Her answer: "you just have to make the time to go do it."