Cancer runs in my family.

We’ve had brain cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer ... and that’s just what I can remember.

Thankfully, breast cancer has not menaced my relatives. But knowing my genes-gone-wild family history, I’m very aware of my body and any changes it undergoes.

With new mammogram guidelines released this week pushing a first screening back from age 40 to 50, it’s even more important that women know their bodies and family histories. But as Quadsvillager jazzmin writes, a mammogram is really the only way to catch cancer at its earliest stages, before it can be felt. That has her fretting the new guidelines.

“As a breast cancer survivor diagnosed at 44, I am outraged at the return to an outdated idea women don’t need mammograms until 50,” jazzmin wrote. “About 10 to 15 years ago, the breast cancer statistics of women in pre/perimenopausal stages increased significantly. Realizing today’s equipment addresses the diagnostic problems of the past, the idea of waiting until 50 for a mammogram is ludicrous. Detection of breast cancer at its earliest stages with an imaging device is crucial to saving the life of someone you love.”

The big question for me as a 30-year-old is, will insurance companies still cover a mammogram for me when I turn 40, or will the new guidelines and cost-cutting measures lead them to approve the test only for women 50 and over?

On a post titled, “Things that make me go hmmm....,” alertreader lists, “Someone else deciding when I should have a mammogram,” as No. 1.

Do the new guidelines worry you? Do you fear official recommendations and insurance companies have taken too much of the decision-making out of the hands of a patient and her doctor?

Stop by my.quadsville.com and let us know.

Melissa Coulter writes on the online community at quadsville.com. Contact her at mcoulter@qctimes.com.