Updated: 11/10/2009 4:24:22 PM
The National Cancer Institute recommends that women start getting mammograms at the age of 40.
But breast cancer can strike women much, much younger.
It's a message Stefani Mundy is hoping to share.
"I never saw it coming," she said. "In fact, even when I found this, I would have just sworn that I didn't have cancer."
The Knoxville woman was diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer at age 28.
Since her July 1 diagnosis, she's had a lumpectomy and three rounds of chemotherapy, with one to go.
Along the way, she's lost her hair, but not her positive attitude.
"I had a choice that this journey could go two different paths," Mundy said. "I could go the path of me going alone and fighting this battle by myself, or it could go the path where I open up to others and I tell my story. And I'm so glad that I chose the path toward others because it's made all the difference in my journey against cancer."
Despite the fact that Mundy's mother is a four-year breast cancer survivor herself, that journey began by accident.
"I was laying on the bed, talking to a friend - a fellow cancer survivor - and I was just talking with my hands," Mundy said. "I laid my hand over on my chest, I found the lump, and my friend insisted that I go to the doctor."
Now, Mundy is using her story and others' support to spread the message of the importance of an early diagnosis.
Her living room mantle is decorated with greeting cards and mementos offering support.
Also hanging there is the t-shirt she wore for this year's Race for the Cure.
The team name was "Keep Hope Alive," a saying her parents often used. However, Hope is also her middle name.
Mundy said she is blessed and grateful for all the support and hopes her story touches others and sends a message.
"Finding cancer is not the worst thing that can happen to you," she said. "In some cases, weird as it sounds, it could be the best thing, but not finding the cancer could be the worst thing that happens to you."
