When Julie Brinklow, a bagpiper from the Scottish town of Ellon, noticed swelling in her right breast in 2023, she didn’t think much of it. “It was something that I wasn’t concerned about,” Julie told Daily Mail. “It wasn’t the textbook small hard lump. It just felt like I had a bigger muscle there or something.”

Julie has been playing the bagpipes for years, a physically demanding instrument that requires chest strength and control. As the Pipe Major of the Grampian Police Pipe Band and the official piper for Aberdeen’s Lord Provost, she assumed the swelling came from flexing her chest muscles on one side while playing.

“I thought to myself that maybe I was just lopsided because I play the bagpipes and you flex your chest muscles a lot when you play,” she said.

The shocking diagnosis

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