Why a growing number of women with breast cancer are choosing double mastectomy
Three years ago, Crystal Collum was 37 years old with three kids at home, “kind of just trucking through life” in Columbia, S.C., when she felt a lump on her breast while showering. She didn’t hesitate — she’d watched her best friend go through breast cancer years earlier, and she knew what to do. Within three weeks she was starting chemotherapy.
But soon after, she was confronted with a choice that even she was unprepared for: have a lumpectomy, a targeted surgery that removes only the tumor, or have a double mastectomy — surgery to completely remove both breasts. The decision was an agonizing one.
“I really could not think about anything else. I really couldn’t. It consumed me,” Collum recalled. “There’s so many things during this process that you have no control over, and then the biggest decision of the entire thing is kind of dropped in your lap and you’re like, no, I don’t feel like I should be making this decision.”
After weeks of soul-searching, information-gathering, talking to
