What Black Breasties Need To Know About Osteopenia

Photo credit: Kelci Nolen At 32 years old, Katrece Nolan was playing with her son on the floor. Something felt off to her. One of her breasts felt swollen and strange but when she felt the area, there wasn’t a lump. Katrece went to the doctor the next day and was told that she was likely suffering from mastitis, even though she hadn’t been nursing for over two years. Her doctor gave her antibiotics, but also scheduled her for a mammogram.  But the mammogram didn’t show anything, according to the doctors, except that Katrece had dense breasts. A few weeks later, Katrece couldn’t even button her shirt because one of her breasts was so swollen. Her doctor sent her to be baselined by a breast surgeon so that she could be monitored moving forward. That breast surgeon knew from the get-go that something was wrong. After several scans and biopsies, Katrece was diagnosed with stage 3 inflammatory breast cancer.  Black women have a higher incidence of inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) than white women. IBC isn’t detected by mammograms—it requires an MRI and a punch biopsy to diagnose. The symptoms of IBC can also present differently for Black women. For instance,...