Three days after a mammogram, Arlene Trott discovered a lump in her breast. She was fishing with her two young children at the time.

“I wasn’t digging around or palpitating,” she said. “I just brushed my hands over my chest.”

The lump was hard and the size of a marble.

“I thought, ‘that’s funny, that shouldn’t be there’.”

On the Monday morning, TB Cancer and Health, the predecessor to the Bermuda Cancer and Health Centre, had told her that her mammogram was all clear, and referred her to her doctor.

“I don’t know why the mammogram didn’t pick it up,” she said. “But it was 18 years ago and technology has improved a great deal since then.”

She was 40, her son Jordan was 12 and her daughter, Cheyenne, was 8.

“People ask me what I told my children,” she said. “I told them the truth.

“My son asked me if I was going to die. I said, ‘I have no intention of dying’.”

A lumpectomy confirmed she had breast cancer.

“The general surgeon was like, you have nothing to worry about. I’m the doctor. I’ll just go in and take out the lump and then maybe later I’ll decide on radiation and do a mastectomy.

“I said, ‘you’ll decide?’ He said, ‘I’m the doctor’. I said, ‘I’m the patient’.”

Ms Trott did not like his bedside manner, nor the fact that he was a general surgeon and not a specialised oncologist surgeon. She was also frustrated by the slowness of Bermuda’s medical system at the time, so made the radical decision to seek further treatment at the University of Michigan, near her niece’s home.

“They had just opened up a cancer treatment centre,” Ms Trott said.

Her insurance company was reluctant to foot the bill since a doctor had not made the referral.

“I went to the United States thinking I’d have to foot the bill myself,” she said. “But how much is my life worth to myself and my family?”

Luckily, the insurance company did pay in the end.

A surgeon oncologist at the University of Michigan cleaned up the rough tumour margins left by the Bermuda surgeon during her lumpectomy. Her treatment then included four rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. She did not need a mastectomy after all, due to the small size of the tumour, but her lymph nodes were removed.

Today, at 58, she is still cancer free, and is happy to tell her story if it will help to save lives.

Last week, she spoke to teenage girls at Bermuda High School for Girls, telling them to know their bodies.

“I told them, I know you’re at that age, but don’t think it’s gross to touch your breasts,” Ms Trott said.

“It’s important to know what they normally feel like.”

She said that even if the girls never suffered from breast cancer, they might be called on to provide emotional support to someone who does. One in eight women develops breast cancer.

“When I went for a follow-up in Michigan there were 21-year-old twin girls waiting for treatment,” Ms Trott said. “One of them had breast cancer.

“I told the girls at BHS, ‘you’re young but it’s not impossible for you to develop breast cancer a little bit down the road’.”

She also urged them to make sure they had good health insurance.

“These days, some employers are saying to new employees, ‘you can forgo the health insurance’.

“Some young people go for that because it’s more money in their paycheque. I told the girls, never, never forgo health insurance. You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Ms Trott, who works in the human resource department at AIG, still suffers from a bit of swelling in her hands and arms due to the removal of her lymph nodes.

“You learn how to massage the fluid away,” she said. “It’s not a deep tissue massage, just a gentle one.”

She is looking forward to participating in the BF&M Breast Cancer Awareness Walk next Wednesday.

Money raised from the walk and from other events held during breast cancer awareness month will go to Bermuda Cancer and Health’s Equal Access Fund, to provide mammograms, diagnostic services and screenings to people who otherwise could not afford them.

“Mammograms today are digital and a lot more sophisticated than they were when I was first diagnosed,” Ms Trott said.

The goal this year is to raise $250,000.

• The BF&M Breast Cancer Awareness Walk starts at 6pm at Barr’s Bay Park in Hamilton. To register, go to www.racedayworld.com or visit BF&M, Sportseller, Bermuda Cancer and Health Centre or the America’s Cup World Series Bermuda Village.