What are the odds that a person who studies breast cancer would end up battling the disease herself?

As a statistician, Lisa Cannon-Albright naturally wondered about that probability as she sat in her doctor's office five years ago, digesting the bad news that she would need immediate treatment for an aggressive tumor.

Since she had spent 20 years interviewing women with breast cancer and studying genetic links to the disease at the University of Utah, "I always figured that I had a good chance of getting it, just because it's so common and I was around it all the time," she says. "But I thought that I'd be in my 70s. Not 48."

It was just before Christmas 2003 when Lisa discovered the marble-sized lump at the bottom of her left breast. "I was pretty casual about it, thinking it was just a cyst," she says. "It was pretty shocking to find out it had spread to my lymph nodes and I'd need surgery right away."

She'll never forget breaking the news to her husband, Derick, and their two sons, Jason, then 16, and Lucas, 10. "That night, Jason had a high school band concert and I sat there sobbing, thinking, 'This is the last concert I'll ever see,"' she says. "I knew what was going on inside my body and I felt all hope fade away. That was the blackest day."

At the time, she couldn't have imagined that she would one day be a healthy and vibrant 52-year-old, running the university's genetic epidemiology department, bicycling up and down Emigration Canyon, seeing one son off to college and the other through puberty.

Five years later, Lisa is proof that it sometimes pays to ignore the odds.

Hoping that others might benefit from her story during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she recently joined me for a Free Lunch chat during a break from studying prostrate cancer and melanoma rates.

"I don't do as much work now with breast cancer — I don't want to put things in my head about survivals and outcomes," she says. "Today, if I'm at a meeting where somebody is presenting breast cancer research, I have to leave the room. It's just too overwhelming."

As a patient, it was difficult for Lisa to receive treatment and advice from the same people she greeted in the elevator every day. "I know everybody involved in cancer at the (U.) hospital," she says, "so it was uncomfortable being on the other end of things. It was a real turn-around."

After surgeons gave her a lumpectomy and took out 10 of her lymph nodes, she underwent rigorous chemotherapy which caused her dark blond hair to fall out in big clumps. "You look in the mirror and wonder, 'Who is this person?"' she says. "I found it easier not to look in the mirror for a year."

Because she is a scientist who deals with hard facts instead of emotions, Lisa initially resisted going to a breast cancer support group. But when a social worker tricked her into showing up at one of the meetings, she ended up with a Kleenex box in her lap, sobbing in front of strangers for the first time.

Those strangers quickly became some of her closest friends — one of the greatest reasons she was able to beat cancer one year later.

"I'd like to tell every woman who gets a bad prognosis, 'You'll get through it — just stay positive,"' she says. "It's OK to lean on people. The first few days it's like climbing out of a black hole. But you've got to make the climb. It's the only way out."

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