Doc dismissed Tenis Pro Gaby Dabrowski Critical Symptom of Cancer

Canadian tennis star Gaby Dabrowski knows in the first hand that the second thoughts save lives.

In 2024, the Olympian was diagnosed with breast cancer and continued to have numerous surgeries and radiation rounds – stopping only to win bronze at the Paris games last summer.

But she says her first sign of cancer was initially rejected by a doctor who told her not to worry about it.

Dabrowski first felt a lump in her left chest in the spring of 2023. At a meeting a few months later, a doctor rejected the mass.

But a year later, during the Tennis Association of her comprehensive physical women, the lump was significantly larger, and the WTA doctor recommended it for a scan.

“First, a mammography … second, an ultrasound … third … a call from the radiologist reading the images, warning me of a lump that didn’t look like a cyst because of its unequal skirts and shades,” Dabrowski discovered in an Instagram post.

An April 2024 biopsy confirmed that Dabrowski had breast cancer.

“It became very gloomy,” she told CNN this week.

After two surgeries at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Dabrowski delayed further treatment to compete in Wimbledon, where she and double partner Erin Ruterffe lost in the finals, and later at the Paris Olympics, where she took a bronze medal in the double mixed competition.

Arctic, after rounds of endocrine radiation and therapy, Dabrowski claimed the title of the WTA finals of the season, along with partner Doubles Rutliffe, a peak for each athlete, let alone a cancer survivor.

Dabrowski, who initially kept her diagnosis secret, came out in public on her health trip at the end of last year, along with the message that early discovery and personal vigilance escape life.

“I really wanted women to be able to know that, although something like cancer is scary, if you get everything you checked early, and you can treat it, breast cancer has a 99% chance of survival,” Dabrowski CNN told.

Fortunately for Dabrowski, her cancer was diagnosed at an early stage, had not spread to its lymph nodes and did not require chemotherapy.

As with any cancer, the sooner the breast cancer is caught, the better the chances of healing. As Dabrowski noted, when breast cancer is detected in its localized phase (before spreading beyond breast), the survival rate is an extraordinary 99%, according to ACS.

However, once it spreads to nearby structures, such as lymph nodes, this rate drops to 87%. And if it spreads to other parts of the body, the chances of survival fall to only 32%.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among American women after skin cancer; About one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime.

According to the National Institute of Health, approximately 25% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer detect cancer through self-examination.

Dr. Elizabeth Come, a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer in NYU Langone Health and the best-selling author of “everyone in her head,” he said about the posting that self-genius exams should be taken immediately after your breasts are less soft in order to understand how your normal breast tissue feels.

The US Task Force recommends that all women start breast cancer appearances every two years starting at age 40.

The group updated its recommendation last year after previously saying that women can choose to start a 40 -year -old breast cancer examination, with a stronger push for two -year exams aged 50 to 74.

The measure towards previous shows is partly in response to an increase in the number of breast cancer cases in young women. The incidence rate for those under 50 has increased by about 1.4% per year, overcoming the increase in cases among older women, according to the American Cancer Association.

While the level of death from breast cancer has fallen thanks to improved treatments, it remains the second most common cause of cancer death among American women.

In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates that 316,950 new cases will be diagnosed in women, with 42,170 expected to die from the disease.

Despite the initial discharge of its critical cancer symptom, Dabrowski is grateful for the course that placed it.

“I do not regret what the doctor told me then [in 2023] Because I’m really happy with the way my year came out, what I learned, what I experienced, “Dabrowski told Olympics.com.

“Cancer had to happen to me; something had to be shocked, and the cancer did it … really shocked me to my essence of what it meant to be alive, what it meant to play a sport to live.

“I tend to take things easier now,” she added. “Profit and loss are not that important at the end of the day. There’s a life after tennis – in two years I’ll reveal this – and I look forward to it. I’m not afraid.”