Don’t skimp on the self-exam, ladies; this runner had a double mastectomy at 23

The lump in Karla Keller’s left breast was so big, it didn’t take a physician to find it. She wasn’t doing one of those arm-in-the-air, finger-probing self exams, either. “It was so big, I felt it while I was rubbing soap over it in the shower,” she says.

She still wasn’t prepared for the doctor’s diagnosis: Three tumors in her left breast. All aggressive. Each fast-growing. She was just 23 years old.

On Sunday, she’ll be one of the hundreds of pink-clad survivors, running in the Race for the Cure. But she might be the youngest one with a double mastectomy.