Canadian tennis star Gaby Dabrowski knows firsthand that second opinions save lives.
In 2024, the Olympian was diagnosed with breast cancer and went on to have multiple surgeries and rounds of radiation — pausing only to win bronze at the Paris Games last summer.
But she says her first sign of cancer was initially dismissed by a doctor who told her not to worry about it.
Dabrowski first felt a lump in her left breast in the spring of 2023. At an appointment a few months later, a doctor dismissed the mass.
But a year later, during her Women’s Tennis Association comprehensive physical, the lump was noticeably larger, and the WTA physician recommended her for a scan.
“First, a mammogram… second, an ultrasound… Third… a phone call from the radiologist reading the images, alerting me to a lump that did not look like a cyst due to its uneven edging and shading,” Dabrowski revealed in an Instagram post.
An April 2024 biopsy confirmed that Dabrowski had breast cancer.
“It turned grim very quickly,” she told CNN this week.
Following two surgeries at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Dabrowski delayed further treatment to compete at Wimbledon, where she and doubles partner Erin Routliffe lost in the finals, and later at the Paris Olympics, where she took home a bronze medal in the mixed doubles competition.
Remarkably, following rounds of radiation and endocrine therapy, Dabrowski claimed the season-end WTA Finals title alongside doubles partner Routliffe, a pinnacle for any athlete, let alone a cancer survivor.
Dabrowski, who initially kept her diagnosis a secret, went public with her health journey late last year along with the message that early detection and personal vigilance save lives.
“I really wanted women to be able to know that, even though something like cancer is scary, if you get whatever you have checked out early, and you can handle it, breast cancer has a 99% chance of survival,” Dabrowski told CNN.
Luckily for Dabrowski, her cancer was diagnosed at an early stage, had not spread to her lymph nodes, and did not require chemotherapy.
As with any cancer, the sooner breast cancer is caught, the better the chances of recovery. As Dabrowski noted, when breast cancer is detected in its localized stage (before it spreads beyond the breast), the survival rate is a remarkable 99%, according to the ACS.
However, once it spreads to nearby structures, like the lymph nodes, that rate drops to 87%. And if it spreads to other parts of the body, survival chances plummet to just 32%.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among US women after skin cancer; about one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 25% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer discover the cancer through self-examination.
Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at NYU Langone Health and best-selling author of “All in Her Head,” told The Post that self-breast exams should be done shortly after your period when your breasts are less tender so that you can understand what your normal breast tissue feels like.
The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all women begin breast cancer screenings every two years starting at age 40.
The group updated its recommendation last year after previously saying women could choose to start breast cancer screening as young as 40, with a stronger push for biennial exams from age 50 through 74.
The move toward earlier screenings is partly in response to the rising number of breast cancer cases in younger women. The incidence rate for those under 50 has increased by about 1.4% annually, outpacing the rise in cases among older women, according to the American Cancer Society.
While breast cancer death rates have declined thanks to improved treatments, it remains the second-most common cause of cancer death among US 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 dismissal of her critical cancer symptom, Dabrowski is grateful for the course it set her on.
“I don’t regret what the doctor told me then [in 2023] because I’m really happy with how my year turned out, what I learned, what I experienced,” Dabrowski told Olympics.com.
“Cancer had to happen to me; something had to shake me, and cancer did that…it really shook me to my core of what it meant to be alive, what it meant to play a sport for a living.
“I tend to take things lighter now,” she added. “Winning and losing are not that important at the end of the day. There’s a life after tennis — in a couple of years I’ll discover that — and I look forward to it. I’m not afraid.”
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