For Staten Islanders, cancer is more than statistics. We want to hear your story.

They echoed in my head, over and over, long after the call ended.

I had gone in for a breast biopsy after a routine mammogram showed “calcifications” — something even the radiologist had downplayed as likely harmless.

But it wasn’t.

In an instant, my world shifted from reassurance to fear. I remember wondering, how did this happen to me?

I was a former smoker, who had quit in my 30s after about 15 years, so I thought, that’s it, right? Or maybe living from the ages of 3 ½ to 29 in Huguenot, in the shadow of the mounds of garbage and stench of the former Fresh Kills Landfill, could have something to do with it, I surmised, even though past studies claim otherwise.