If someone has a lump in her breast for 20 years, is it cancer?

There’s little that scares women more than finding a breast lump, especially if you know you’re at risk for breast cancer because of family history or for other reasons. But if it happens to you, the first thing to do is take a deep breath and try to stay calm, because that lump doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.

The first thing to know is that almost every woman has some lumpiness in her breasts, most of which is normal fatty or fibrocystic breast tissue.

If you’ve never spent much time doing breast self-exams before and you try it and find a lump or multiple lumps, don’t panic. Take some time to get to know where the lumps are.

Explore them and think about these questions:

1. Do they feel hard, rubbery, or squishy?
2. Is there just one, or are there multiple lumps?
3. Are they painful?
4. Do they come and go or change over time?
5. Do they change based on where you are in your menstrual cycle, if you’re pre- or perimenopausal?
6. Does the skin of your breast look normal?

Most of the time, the lumps are benign fibrous tissue or cysts and nothing to worry about, but keep up your breast exams so you have a sense of what is normal to you.