KTLA 5: Expert and Breast Cancer Survivor Highlight Awareness and Hope
People and KTLA 5 recently interviewed breast cancer survivor Wendy Sanchez, who chose to return to Huntington Health, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai, for treatment because doctors there had saved her life after a debilitating car accident in 2022.
Sanchez, 30, told People she discovered a lump above her breast in 2024 while applying a therapeutic ointment to scars from surgeries that repaired the broken bones and damaged organs she sustained in the head-on collision.
While telling her husband about the lump, she said, “I have a really strong feeling it’s cancer.”
A mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy confirmed stage 1 triple-positive ductal carcinoma—a type of breast cancer that more commonly affects women 50 and younger.
During KTLA 5’s “The Doctor Will See You Now” segment, Sanchez told anchors Lu Parker and Glen Walker that self-exams are vital “even if you’re young like me. I got diagnosed at 28.”
Amy Polverini, MD, Sanchez’s surgical oncologist at Huntington Cancer Center, told Parker and Walker that experts are “scratching our heads a little bit” as to why breast cancer incidence rates are rising among younger people.
“It’s probably—what we like to say is—multifactorial,” Polverini said. “So, a combination of things—women are having kids later in life, there’s more alcohol consumption, and then there’s environmental and toxin exposures that we just can’t quite measure that are definitely playing a role.”
She added that while triple-positive ductal carcinoma is “on the more aggressive side,” Sanchez’s prognosis is excellent, thanks to early detection and successful treatment.
Sanchez urged viewers to trust their instincts and advocate for themselves.
“Go to a doctor and speak out,” she said.
Click here to read the complete article from People. Click here to watch the complete segment on KTLA 5.