A woman who missed routine cancer screenings during the COVID-19 pandemic has been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.
Woobie Rust, 39, from New York told Fox News she performed a self-exam after experiencing breast pain while lying on a massage table.
Soon after, she met with a doctor and, following a few tests, was diagnosed with metastatic stage breast cancer.
Rust is hoping that others will hear her story, and make sure not to miss routine screenings and avoid ending up in a situation like her own.
Woobie Rust (pictured) missed her routine medical screenings during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has now been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She hopes others will hear her story, and make sure to avoid missing crucial screenings
Dr Sarah Cate, director of the special surveillance and breast program at Mount Sinai Chelsea Medical Center, is helping treat Rust and also warns people not to miss regular COVID-19 screenings
Rust told Fox News that her mother was a breast cancer survivor, and she had regularly undergone an annual physical exam until Covid disrupted her regular schedule last year.
She is like many who missed routine screenings for cancer, kidney disease and other serious conditions last year, leading to an uptick in the amount of serious cases diagnosed over the past year.
Dr Sarah Cate, director of the special surveillance and breast program at Mount Sinai Chelsea Medical Center warned that missing screenings will hurt breast cancer patients in the long term.
'There will definitely be adverse effects on breast cancer from COVID,' she told Fox News.
She says that she is already beginning to see the effects of many people missing routine screenings last year.
'It is still too early to see this effect, but certainly, anecdotally, I am seeing lots of locally advanced breast cancers which need chemotherapy prior to surgery, and some cancers where they have spread outside the breasts and lymph nodes,' Cate said
'Early detection is the best way to prevent death
