She died of breast cancer. She said it didn’t have to be that way [Video]

Before Tanja Harrison died of breast cancer, she left the world with a dire message: supplemental screening could have saved her life.

Following a routine mammogram in 2021 that came back clear, the Nova Scotia woman learned she had dense breasts and requested supplemental screening — an MRI or ultrasound — to ensure her dense breast tissue was not concealing something nefarious. 

It can be difficult for mammograms to pick up cancers in people with dense breasts because dense breast tissue and abnormal breast changes such as tumours both show up as white areas on the imaging. 

Harrison was denied the screening. Two years later, she discovered she had Stage 4 breast cancer with extensive bone metastases. She was told it was not …