Mark Graham, a medical oncologist, got lots of attention recently for ministering to N.C. state women's basketball coach Kay Yow as she battled cancer and, ultimately, lost.

Yow was 66, hardly old but old enough for most Mom2Mom readers to talk themselves into a false sense of security that what happened to Yow could not – would not – happen to us.

Well, it could. It did.

Another, less famous, patient of Graham’s died Feb. 13. Kristi Winters Walker had two boys, 2 and 4, and a newborn, who was delivered in November a month early when his mother’s back pain became excruciating. Doctors thought she might have a pregnancy-related liver complication.

She didn’t. She had breast cancer. And she was less than half Yow’s age.

Walker had no risk factors – didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, ate healthy, exercised, had no family history.

She did her breast self-exams. In college, she even had a lump biopsied; everything was fine.

Pregnancy hormones can make breasts do all sorts of unusual things as milk ducts expand in preparation. As a nursing mother, Walker was aware of the changes in her breasts. I remember my doctor telling me that breast cancer is rare during pregnancy – not as a way to excuse monthly self-exams but more as a reassurance.

Walker never felt anything out of the ordinary, her husband said. Graham, her oncologist, said she had an extremely aggressive cancer that took root quickly and spread even quicker.

Still, what happened to her should be a wake-up call to young, invincible women everywhere – pregnant and otherwise – to conduct self-exams with religious ardor.

For those with a family history, get a baseline mammogram 10 years before you turn the age that your youngest relative with breast cancer was when she was diagnosed.

If you have no family history, make sure you have your first mammogram at 40 and have annual breast exams by a physician.

Where you get that mammogram is crucial, too; Graham recommends the technicians and doctors at Rex Hospital, Raleigh Radiology and Wake Radiology.

After women finish having children, he said, many don’t see a doctor regularly; that’s a mistake. Self-exams are crucial, but doctors are trained to feel abnormalities.

Two days after Walker died, Graham phoned the home of her parents, where she and her family had been living while she was undergoing treatment.

He wondered whether anyone might want to accompany him to Hoops 4 Hope, a basketball game that raises money for Kay Yow’s breast cancer awareness fund.

Walker’s father, Mike Winters, joined Graham. When breast cancer survivors were recognized at half-time, Winters couldn’t help but notice there was no one his daughter’s age.

“Breast cancer was the farthest thing from our minds,” said Chuck Walker, Kristi’s husband.

But by the time baby Zane was delivered and blood tests were run, Walker’s cancer was stage IV – the worst.

It was just her and her father in the hospital room when eight doctors and nurses came in with tears in their eyes and announced Walker had cancer in her bones.

They didn’t know at the time where it had originated, but they did know her liver and spine and pelvis were affected. Then they learned it was breast cancer.

“It was extremely unusual in a girl of her age,” said her father, Mike Winters. He reconsidered his choice of words. “I call her a girl but she’s a woman. She’s 30 years old, but she’s my baby.”

In actuality, she was the oldest of three children, a softball player at Apex High School who met her husband, Chuck, at Baylor University in Texas.

She taught school until she had children then decided to stay home to raise them. She taught them about animals and nature, took them strawberry-picking and didn’t care when the fruit stained their clothes red.

She could have been one of the featured moms on TriangleMom2Mom.com.

She was involved in MOPS, Mothers of Preschoolers, at her church. She dreamed of taking her boys to Disney, though that dream was never realized.

She spent much of the last few months in the hospital, but on her last day home, the day the Triangle woke up to snow on roofs and lawns and city streets, she summoned her strength to make her two older boys hot chocolate after they finished frolicking in the snow.

That night, she was strong enough to give baby Zane a bottle, only the second or third time she’d been able to do so since he was born.

On Tuesday, the pews at Colonial Baptist Church, where Kay Yow’s funeral was held, swelled again. This time people came to honor Kristi Walker.

Mark Graham was there. So were her sons.

At the end of this month, Walker’s oldest son, Cade, turns 5. After his mother died, Cade turned to his father with an observation far beyond his 4 years and 11 months.

“Daddy,” he said, “my life is never going to be the same without my mommy.”

He’s right.

Bonnie appears Saturdays on TriangleMom2Mom.