My dog knew I had cancer before I did then helped me through chemo: He was a greater purpose for me
A young woman’s dog was the first to detect her deadly breast cancer.In June 2023, Breanna Bortner, then 30, noticed her cockapoo Mochi became fixated on her right breast; sniffing, pawing and burrowing into the area.
Stranger still, her sister-in-law’s cockapoo Gunner exhibited the same behavior.“It was very odd,” Bortner told DailyMail.com. In the previous year, Bortner had felt increasingly fatigued.While itching a mosquito bite around her breasts, she noticed a lump.
Having heard anecdotal stories of dogs detecting their owner’s cancer by scent alone, she was disquieted by the attention.Cockapoos are a mix between a poodle and a cocker spaniel, two breeds known for their acute intelligence and keen sense of smell.
Bortner was already planning to get tested, but Mochi’s insistence was the canine catalyst for seeking medical care.Within a few days, she was diagnosed with stage 2B triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma.Triple-negative is a more aggressive type of breast cancer that does not have any of the three common “receptors” in the cells, which means it doesn’t respond to the hormonal therapies that are typically used to fight the disease. Bortner, who runs the blog Brave Beautiful Boobies, recalled that despite having a clean bill of health from a breast exam three months earlier, the mass in her breast was already an inch and a half.“That’s how fast and aggressive this triple-negative breast cancer is.
It went from non-feel-able, non-detectable to a physical lump within three months,” she said.Breast cancer is the most common cancer among US women after skin cancer. About 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Though breast cancer starts in a localized part of the breast tissue, it can spread to other areas of the body, significantly decreasing rates of survival.Survival rates among breast cancer patients whose cancer is detected before it spreads are high, between 86% and 89%.Yet if t...