The "Blink and You'd Miss It" Breast Cancer Symptom

When you learn about breast cancer in health class or at the doctor's office, you're usually told to consult someone if you see a lump on your breast. But a viral photo posted to Facebook by breast cancer survivor Claire Warner shows another, less obvious sign of the disease.

“This is a picture of my left boob," she captioned it. "The minuscule dimple up and to the left of it is a rare and little-known symptom of breast cancer. Blink and you’d miss it. I only spotted it thanks to another post shared by an amazing friend.” Thanks to this post, she wrote, she caught the cancer "exceptionally early," underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, and has high hopes for recovery.

A similar Facebook post by a woman named Kylie Armstrong went viral earlier this year, pointing out three small dimples at the bottom of her breast that ultimately led to her cancer diagnosis. "I am sharing this because I hope I can make people aware that breast cancer is not always a detectable lump," she wrote.

"Skin dimpling" is indeed acknowledged as a sign of breast cancer, according to Healthline. Inflammatory breast cancer, which blocks the lymph vessels in the skin, is the usual type to cause the dimple-like pattern Warner and Armstrong exhibited. Between one and five percent of breast cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are of inflammatory cancer, which can also manifest through breast swelling, pain, and a burning sensation in the breasts.

Dimpling can also indicate a non-cancer-related conditioned called fat necrosis, but it's still worth going to the doctor to figure out what it is.

"PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check yourself (males as well as females) and get your loved ones to check themselves also," Warner advised others. "If I can help one other person, the way I was helped, then it’s been worth showing my soon-to-be-reduced left tit to the world." Amen to that.