For Elizabeth Bynum, a former telephone operator who has since dabbled in drag racing, breast exams had become fairly routine.

That did not make them any less frightening.

“I have fibrocystic breasts, which means they are lumpy,” Bynum said recently. “I’ve found lumps in my right breast many times, and there’s never been anything wrong.”

During her yearly mammogram on June 1 (”Every man should have a mammogram, so they can know what it’s like,” Bynum mumbled in passing), doctors found an irregularity.

“They said I had to have a needle biopsy on June 15,” said Bynum, 58.

But it was to be done on her left breast. Calcifications had been found, early indicators of a possible precancerous condition.

On June 24, she got a phone call.

“The doctor asked me to come in. I said, ‘I have cancer, don’t I?’ He said, ‘Just come in. I want to talk to you.’ And I said again, ‘I have cancer, don’t I?’”

Months before the diagnosis, Bynum said, she had watched her cousin die of colon cancer, so her own view of the situation was immediately grim. Cancer was in her family, her mother having died of pancreatic cancer and two cousins both having battled breast cancer. One had been successful.

“She just finished her 10th year off of tamoxifen (estrogen blocker),” she sai. “So she’s a cancer survivor.”

Bynum’s doctor made it clear that, because the area was small, with a lumpectomy and radiation, she had a 95 percent chance of survival.

“I told him, ‘I want better than that!’” Bynum said. “I didn’t want to die. I was scared, very scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I have a grandson, and I wanted to be around to see him grow up.”

Her doctor’s caring attitude and reassurances eventually allayed Bynum’s fears.

“He gave me hope, and I decided that, from everything I’d ever heard about cancer, the only way you can beat cancer is with your attitude.”

Bynum’s treatment began with surgery for a lumpectomy. Next, the mammocite regime, an internal, 5-day therapy that targets tumor sites.