Woman whose mum died from breast cancer campaigns for change to screening practices
Ellen O'Donoghue
Martha Lovett Cullen was just 25 years old when her mum died of breast cancer in August 2024, around a year after being diagnosed.
The young Dublin woman is now calling on the Minister for Health to improve breast cancer screening for women with dense breasts.
Martha launched a petition on Friday, March 7th, calling on Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to a breast density notification law. This law would require all women to be notified whether they have dense or non-dense breast tissue after a mammogram.
Marian Lovett, Martha’s mum, was just 61 when she died of breast cancer. Her children were 19 and 25 years old.
Marian had a clear mammogram in 2022, but a year later, she was diagnosed with terminal, stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
She later discovered that she had dense breast tissue, which makes it harder for a mammogram to detect breast cancer.
Marian was never told she had dense breasts, so was unaware that a mammogram would be less effective at detecting breast cancer.
“At the same time she was being told she had cancer, she was also told that she had very dense breasts, which could have masked her tumour on her mammogram,” Marian’s daughter Martha explains.
She went through treatments, but in August 2024, just after turning 61, she went into hospital with side effects from chemo.
Marian was kept in the hospital for around a month, while the side effects were treated.
“Everything was going to plan, she was making great progress and then, just kind of out of nowhere, the cancer just kind of burst like a dam and took over, and then she was gone very suddenly within the space of like a day or two,” Martha says.
“Even when she was ill, she was very frustrated by the fact that if she had just been notified of her breast density, then they might have caught the cancer earlier, if she had gone for an ultrasound or an MRI, she might still be here today”.
Martha is now campaigning to “try and get something done” about breast density notification in Ireland, “so it doesn’t have to happen again to women like my mum”.
“My mum was very much an advocate for speaking up for things, speaking up for people and for things that are wrong or things that should be called out on, she was very much a feminist. She was outspoken and confident and just really a force of nature,” Martha says.
“She didn’t think it was fair that such a small piece of information wasn’t given to her sooner, because just the fact that it’s something you should be told, where you would be told if you had high blood pressure or high cholesterol because it is a risk factor for developing breast cancer as well as it going unseen”.
“She was very inspiring and raised me and my brother to very much stand up for what is right and make change in things that need it”.
In every state in America, when a woman gets her first mammogram, in the letter they receive with their results, they are also given their level of breast density and so if they want to go for an ultrasound or to go back for further scans, they have the option to do that, according to Martha.
“It’s the same I think, in , most of Australia, Canada, Belgium, , like a lot of countries, it’s just part of their system that when you start to get your screenings later on in age, it’s just part of the report you get, because they’re aware that dense breast tissue can mask anything sinister that might show up on a mammogram, so it’s much safer for women with dense breasts to get ultrasounds and in some cases, MRIs,” Martha explains.
Women should ask about their breast density when getting their mammogram results and insist on being told, Martha believes.
“When you look at scan examples, it’s very clear when a woman has dense breasts because there’s just a lot of white, a lot of imaging shows up as white because dense breasts have more fibrous and glandular tissue and less fat, which shows up as white on a mammogram”.
“It’s a very obvious finding and a very visual finding and a radiologist is kind of able to tell at a glance whether a woman has dense breasts or non-dense breasts, so it doesn’t take a whole other process or screening, it doesn’t take anything further,” she says.
Marian Lovett lived a very normal life, her daughter says. She did not eat unhealthily, drank in moderation, never had any major health issues and had no history of cancer on either side of her family.
“We were all just very shocked when she was diagnosed, but something that I think we were all very glad about was that in the year that she was ill, she didn’t let it dampen her spirit, she didn’t let it discourage her from living her life the way she wanted to live it,” Martha says.
“She did two different courses in Trinity in the last five years, postgrads, to do with health innovation actually, just because she wanted to, and it was something she was interested in. She was always just coming up with ways to make things better”.
“She kept up with things and always had ideas for how, just how things could be made better for women, especially in Ireland, just given the way that I think women’s health is often pushed to the side in this country and it’s not made a priority,” Martha says.
Her mum followed the Vicky Phelan case very closely too, and was “outraged by how that ended”.
“I think they really need to do better in that respect, especially given that a lot of other countries, including countries in Europe are. We’re basically just lagging very far behind”.
“We miss her every day,” Martha says about her mum. “Nothing’s really the same anymore now, without her”.
“But doing all of this kind of work has also made me feel closer to her in a way, because I know that it’s what she would want me to be doing and getting the word out there. I just feel like she’s with me throughout all of this”.
Martha’s petition calling on improvements to breast cancer screening for women with dense breasts can now has over 5,900 signatures, and can be found here.
