At the beginning of March 2007, I returned to the journalism school from which I’d graduated more than 25 years before. I was an honored guest, a top editor at an iconic magazine — a job that was the culmination of a lifelong dream, and of all the ambitions I’d carried with me when I had last set foot on campus. It was a sweet moment.

Just weeks later, I was out of a job. That’s life, right? But the prospect of imminent unemployment did something critical: It spurred me to get a mammogram in the last days that I qualified for my company’s screening program. And that mammogram put me on a path I’d never considered back when I was formulating my future.

Read my story here: http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20223723,00.html