GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Last December, Arielle Mitchell felt a lump in her breast.

She brought it up to her doctor, who recommended a mammogram.

"I didn't hear anyone else in my family having it, so I just thought it was just a cyst," said Mitchell.

She put off scheduling an appointment until her doctor called to remind her. The mammogram did not find anything, so they scheduled a biopsy.

"Three days later, I found out that I had carcinoma, cancer, stage one going into two, " said Mitchell.

She was 36 years old at the time of her diagnosis, younger than the recommended age to get regular mammograms.

"In general, only about five or six percent of our breast cancer cases are diagnosed under 40, but those numbers are going up, actually, globally," said Dr. Bess Connors, a breast surgic

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