During this Breast Cancer Awareness Month, one woman is using her own battle with cancer to teach people the importance of routine mammograms.

Margarita Reid isn't afraid to tell her story, in fact she wants to tell it.

Her cancer was caught during a routine mammogram in 2015.

“We made the decision, he says we found out you have breast cancer on your left breast it’s a lump and the way I see it, if I can remove the lump that's what I will do, but if I need to remove the whole breast. I said, 'you are the doctor you do whatever you need to do, I just want it out of my body,” says Reid.

Dr. Victoria Forte, the Cancer Center director at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County, says stories of survival like this are more common.

“Thankfully, we have come a long way in the treatment of breast cancer. Many patients are diagnosed in earlier stages, and when they are diagnosed in earlier stages, they do much better. And overall, in the past few decades we have seen mortality from breast cancer or death from breast cancer drop dramatically,” says Dr. Forte.

She says in the last few years they have a new breast cancer treatment option approved every year.

"There is a lot of hope for everyone diagnosed with breast cancer no matter what the stage,” says Dr. Forte.