MALE BREAST CANCER

(Excerpt from Busting Loose)


With Breast Cancer, Macho Doesn't Mean Mucho


This year in America, fourteen hundred men will hear they have breast cancer. All of them will be shocked and dumbfounded. And some of them will die. -Ted Allen, Esquire magazine, June, 2000

Close to one percent of all breast cancer patients are men. There is a persistent myth that male breast cancer is more serious then female breast cancer, but that is not the case. Male breast cancer has a worse prognosis only because the disease is usually diagnosed at a later stage.

Male breast cancer tends to be diagnosed later because doctors are less familiar with the disease in men. In addition, the man himself often ignores the lump—unaware he is at risk of breast cancer. Sometimes, very tragically, even specialists flat-out ignore the problem.

Dave Lyons is a male breast cancer survivor. Dave discovered his breast lump when it was still quite small. Over the next eight years he made appointments to see four different doctors. None of them took him seriously. After eight years, pain came into the picture. Dave’s lump ached, his chest ached, and his arm ached. Sometimes the pain brought tears to his eyes. “The only pain I can think of that comes even close,” he recalls, “is getting hit in the testicles.”

Recovering male breast cancer patients often say the deadly silence about the disease among men kept them from seeking help earlier. The rarity of male breast cancer, combined with a reluctance to talk by many who have had it, keeps the disease under wraps. This could be a testosterone problem, according to breast cancer survivor, Galen, who owns a used-bookstore in Colorado. “Men have this thing, like, ‘We’re too strong to get breast cancer.’” Galen often alerts male customers to the danger they might be facing. “I get a lot of men in my store, who come to Boulder for the hiking and rock-climbing. If the conversation gets around to where I can get a word in, I tell ‘em I’m a breast cancer survivor. Their eyes get big and they say: ‘What do you mean? Men can’t get breast cancer!’”

The risk factors for male breast cancer are the same as for female breast cancer. For example, there is an increased risk for men of Jewish heritage, or who have a family history that includes genetic mutations associated with breast cancer.

If you have a husband, son or father with a lump in his chest, tell him to get it checked out. Fortunately, doctors are more aware of male breast cancer these days then they were when Dave Lyons spent eight years trying to find a doctor who would take him seriously.

The mother of a neighbor of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer this past summer. The mother’s diagnosis led to her husband going in for a check-up of a troubling lump, where he was also diagnosed with breast cancer. It may seem like unbelievably bad luck, but there were compensations. For one thing, husband and wife both had their cancers detected early. For another, as the daughter said to me (only half-joking): “The two of them are their own support group.”

Breast cancer is not a woman’s disease; it is a human disease. Old or young, black or white, gay or straight, poor or rich, married or un-, female or male—none of us are immune.


Buy Busting Loose: Cancer Survivors Tell You What Your Doctor Won't
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