INDIANAPOLIS — A bill making its way through the state legislature deals with one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers in women.
"It's a taboo subject," said Heather Pirowski as she sat in front of lawmakers on the Senate's Health and Provider Services Committee Wednesday morning.
Pirowski was there to talk about breast cancer, a subject she's not afraid to discuss, even in front of some of the most important people in Indiana.
That's because this wife and mother of two sons has work to do.
She knows she's likely living on borrowed time.
It's not an easy thing to face when she considers her husband and sons, one in high school and one in college.
"Odds are, I will not seem them graduate," Pirowski told lawmakers, explaining that in 2020, she was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer but has been in remission for the past three years.
"It is, normally, survival rate is within three years, the cancer will come back, so I'm one of the lucky ones that the cancer hasn't come back yet," Pirowski said. "A lot of us are being diagnosed at Stage 3 and 4, if we're able to understand and catch breast cancer early, it's a 99% survival rate."
Wednesday, Pirowski and others testified in support of House Bill 1058. It would require mammogram providers to send letters to patients after a mammogram and let them know if they have dense breasts, which makes cancer harder to see on a mammogram and also increases their risks of having it.
"Their independent risk for breast cancer is four to six times higher than the average patient who does not have dense breasts," Colleen Madden, a radiologist and also part of the IU School of Medicine, testified. "It's very important that patients have an understanding of what their breast density is."
That's something Pirowski said she had no idea put her at risk for developing breast cancer.
"When I had my first mammogram in 2019, I did not know that mammograms do not work if you have dense breasts. My provider did not recommend that I have additional diagnostic testing. Within one year, my breast cancer spread," Pirowksi said.
Under the bill, doctors would also be notified about the importance of recommending more testing to patients with dense breasts, via an ultrasound or MRI, which can see cancer better in dense breasts.
The FDA recently passed regulations requiring the same measures.
"The whole goal is to detect breast cancer early," said Pirowski, adding that will ultimately save lives.
House Bill 1058 passed unanimously out of committee and now heads to the full Senate for consideration.