R&B singer Shanice says she was diagnosed with breast cancer after skipping mammogram for 8 years

R&B singer Shanice is sharing new details of her breast cancer journey, revealing she was diagnosed with the disease after avoiding mammograms for nearly a decade.

“I just want to tell women how important it is to get your mammograms,” Shanice said on Good Morning America Wednesday. “If I would have gone sooner, I could have caught [it] when it was just at stage zero.”

She said she had a health scare in her mid-40s, when doctors thought she had a cancerous lump in her breast.

Doctors determined the lump was a cyst that didn’t require further testing, but Shanice, now 51, said the scare deterred her from getting screened annually for breast cancer.

Shanice said earlier this year, in March, she felt a lump in her breast that prompted her to return to her doctor for a mammogram.

The mammogram and a subsequent ultrasound showed cancer.

Though doctors originally thought she had ductal carcinoma in situ — when cancer cells are only in the lining of the milk ducts and have not spread to other parts of the breast — Shanice said she opted for a double mastectomy.

After undergoing the surgery, Shanice said she was told by doctors that she had a stage 1, 1-centimeter tumor in her breast.

She hopes women learn from her story to put their fear aside and get screened regularly for breast cancer. She noted that early detection is particularly important for women who are Black.

“I just want to tell women out there, put that fear aside,” Shanice said. “If you get checked early, you can beat this thing. It’s not a death sentence. If you can get there early, you’ll live.”