Twenty-eight-year old Feather Janz is a new mother and a public speaker. The B.C. woman is also a breast cancer survivor who found a lump in her breast, while a 23-year-old college student and physical fitness instructor, and was told it would be benign.

Janz spoke to a luncheon sponsored by the Southeast Unit of the Canadian Cancer Society at the Wheatland Seniors' Centre on Monday, and went on to explain how cancer intruded her body while she was still young.

Two years later, she found another lump. The second lump grew aggressively in a few months to be the size of a lemon before it finally was removed. That was two years after the first discovery and doctors were still assuring her it would be benign.

Several doctors told her she was too young to be at risk for breast cancer and the large amounts of caffeine she consumed was creating the growths, said Janz in Weyburn on Monday.

One doctor told her the growing lump couldn't be cancerous because it hurt during her fitness workouts. "I wanted to believe them, " she said.

It was only after the lump was examined and found to be malignant that doctors conceded she had breast cancer and the breast was removed.

Now she spends a good deal of her time working with the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, educating women of all ages about breast self-examination, healthy choices, and living.

Women need to take responsibility for their health, including regular self-exams and mammograms at an older age, she said.

"I slowly found how to have hope," she said. "I surrounded myself by people with my vision of hope, not a negative vision, and by people who would stick by me."

She discovered during the treatment program that women often are offered several options and asked to make treatment decisions themselves, so she wanted all the information she could get about breast cancer.

She joined a self-help group and educated herself. "Information was power and I wanted control over it," she said. "I decided I would have a future, no matter what it was or how long it would be."

Janz said 70 women under the age of 29 are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in Canada and many of them don't make it much further because it is not caught early enough. "With early detection, survival rates are as high as 87 per cent."

Many women don't know to look as high as the collar bone for lumps and to examine under the armpit as well where there is also breast tissue, she said.

Breast cancer is the No. 1 killer of women in Canada between the ages of 35-54.