When a radiologist asked a technician to redo Lowell Tomassi's mammogram in 2008, she was at first concerned but later relieved when the second screening indicated everything was OK.

But it happened again a year later, when Tomassi went for her annual mammogram.

"I flunked another time," she said, explaining that because of dense, fibrous tissue in her breasts, the medical staff reading her X-rays were uncertain exactly what they were seeing. Just like the year before, Tomassi was ushered into a closet-sized room filled with literature about breast cancer while a doctor looked at her results and then told the technician to rescreen Tomassi.

And, once again, after the second screening she was told everything looked normal and that she was good to go for another year. But the repeat double screening didn't sit right with Tomassi, and in 2010, when it was time for her annual breast checkup, she told her general practitioner and obstetrician-gynecologist that she wanted an ultrasound and not a mammogram.

Tomassi had done some homework and learned that dense tissue can sometimes obscure cancer with a mammogram and that, in her case, an ultrasound could provide a better assessment.

Her doctors agreed and following the ultrasound in February 2010, Tomassi was diagnosed with Stage 3A estrogen positive ductal breast cancer. There was a sizeable barbell-shaped mass in her right breast that hadn't been detected before with manual breast exams or mammograms. At the time, she was living at the other end of the state and would undergo a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and reconstructive surgery at Greenwich and Norwalk hospitals.

Initially, Tomassi didn't talk much about her breast cancer or treatment, but a decade later and now living in Mystic, she believes it's important to share her story and her message that a mammogram and manual exams might not be the best diagnostic tool for everybody.

She's a mother of three daughters and the sibling of three sisters — all of whom supported her during her battle with breast cancer — but she wants to be not only an advocate for her family, but for all people facing cancer.

October is national Breast Cancer Awareness Month in this country, and according to www.breastcancer.org about 1 in 8 U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of their lives. This year it's anticipated that an estimated 276,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in American women as well as 48,530 cases of noninvasive breast cancer. Additionally, about 2,620 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

'Cancer changes your life'

Looking back on her ordeal, Tomassi said she was both frightened and uncertain as she navigated her diagnosis and treatment. Her sisters stepped up to help with her young daughters, and her friends and neighbors assisted her in finding doctors and caregivers with whom she was comfortable.

Although her cancer was in her right breast, Tomassi decided to have both breasts removed because she said she knew if she looked at herself in the mirror and was lopsided, "I would be so sad."

She also had more than two dozen lymph nodes removed under her right arm and five under her left arm, and eventually opted for a hysterectomy since she was estrogen positive and multiple medicines prescribed to her made her ill.

"My cancer was getting its energy from estrogen," she said.

At the time of her treatment, she said, she suffered both physically and mentally.

"When you have cancer, you really learn who your friends are," Tomassi said, adding that her former neighbors stepped up to help in many ways.

"Cancer changes your life," she said. "And, it makes you realize how petty life can be, and how we all need to be there for one another."

She wonders now, if she had been aware earlier that a mammogram wasn't the best screening tool for her and that an ultrasound was a better route to go, if she would have had Stage 1 or 2, not Stage 3 cancer, when she was diagnosed.

It also turns out that she was suffering from Lyme disease at the time, but had been misdiagnosed. Looking back, she believes she was afflicted with Lyme and breast cancer for a year or more before both were detected.

But she's not looking back. She's resettled in Mystic and spends time sailing and cruising with friends, and she is leaning on her past experiences in design services and as a project manager to help oversee some construction projects.

Tomassi is grateful to be past her cancer treatment and aware that over the decade since she was diagnosed, there have been advances in treatment and improved diagnostic tools.

"With cancer, everyone has their own story," she said. "I just want people to know they have to speak up for themselves like I did with the ultrasound."