Pink Ribbon Review | Raising Breast Cancer Awareness

Male Breast Cancer

by Karen Lynch on April 11th, 2008

Earlier today I posted about The Ryde’s new Charitees brand of t-shirts. In a follow-up email exchange I learned that The Ryde’s warehouse worker found some pre-cancerous growths under his breast plate at the doctor’s office a few weeks ago. It was well after their philanthropic initiative began, but it brought the entire initiative closer to home.

“Once we heard, we all started to put a little more effort into the project,” said Robb Bailey, web guy for The Ryde. FYI, Danny should be ok, he’s going into surgery in a few weeks to “nip it in the bud” and hopefully, Robb will update me at that time.

Meanwhile, I also want to share this story. One of my readers over at Discussing Breast Cancer … I’ll call her D because I haven’t been able to get a hold of her to ask if I can share what she shared with me … D’s dad was diagnosed with Stage II IDC in 1988 when he was 63 years old. Long story short, he discovered a lump in his chest that didn’t go away. He had a radical mastectomy. He was ER+ so he went on Tamoxifen, assumed he’d be fine and cancer free for the rest of his life. However, 11 years later, in 1999, he developed flu like symptoms that never quite went away. After a few diagnostic tests, metastatic marks were found on his liver, spine and skull. He started chemo … but passed away in 2001.

Then, just this week, I heard from a new reader here at the Pink Ribbon Review — a man named Fred who spoke up in the comment section of an earlier post. Fred is a 68 year old male and a two year survivor. In May of 2006 he had a modified radical mastectomy and is doing fine now (yeah!).

Male breast cancer is rare but it does happen. It most often afflicts men who are between the ages of 60 & 70. Risk factors include exposure to radiation (usually due to treatment for another cancer inside the chest, like Hodgkins or non-Hodgkins lymphoma), family history of breast cancer and/or abnormalities in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, high levels of estrogen, heavy alcohol use, liver disease, obesity … something called Klinefelter Syndrome, a congenital condition, present at birth, giving men more than one X chromosome instead of one X and one Y (women have two X chromosomes … remember all this from your school days guys?).

So … what’s my party line? Be vigilant. Be vigilant about doing breast self-exams, both men and women. Be vigilant about getting regular check-ups and physical examinations, both men and women. Be vigilant and get yourself detected if you become one of those ones that develop breast cancer.

If, in the future, I most likely will ‘lean female’ with this blog. But please do not feel excluded if you are a male with breast cancer (or someone who knows a man with breast cancer). Instead, I urge you to stick around and speak up — continue to inform me and my readers about how this disease doesn’t only affect one gender!

Any more stories about male breast cancer that you want to share?

(Image: Karen Lynch)

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POSTED IN: Breast Self Exam, Charities, Contests/Giveaways, Diagnosis, Male breast cancer, Mastectomy, Survivor Stories