Eight years ago I didn’t know. I thought I knew the basics — I scheduled a yearly women’s exam and supported breast cancer awareness whenever an opportunity presented itself; but with no family history of the disease, I never thought I would need to know more. My journey with breast cancer started rather unexpectedly in September 2011, when I was visiting Dr. William Schoolcraft, fertility specialist and founder of CCRM (Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine), to begin an in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle for my husband, Bill, and I start our path of becoming parents. Dr. Schoolcraft ordered a mammogram before beginning my fertility treatments, a test CCRM uniquely orders for every patient to ensure patients are healthy before undergoing any treatment — something prior fertility clinics I went to didn’t do. What was initially meant to be the most exciting time in our lives quickly turned far scarier than your typical starting-a-family nerves. The test, to everyone’s surprise, found an early-stage tumor. To this day I think, what if I hadn’t sought treatment with CCRM? Had the test not been performed, who knows how my journey could have changed?