Male Breast Cancer
From CNN.com, One Man’s Journey with breast cancer.
From the Article:
It started with a pain behind the nipple. Within a few weeks, a lump started to grow. It got bigger and more painful until a doctor finally diagnosed stage 4 breast cancer. It’s a story shared by thousands around the United States, only in this case, the patient’s name is Bill Morley.
He’s lived with breast cancer for two and a half years, and his fight for survival hasn’t been easy. The disease has now spread to his bones. He says, “The first thing anyone thinks when they’re told they have cancer is, ‘OK, can I survive it or not?’ and as bad as I felt, I just figured I wasn’t going to survive it.”
About 450 men die from breast cancer each year. Even though more than 2,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year in the United States, the disease is considered rare among men. Breast cancer is 100 times more common among women. (Health Minute: Watch more on one man’s struggle with breast cancer )
“It’s like being the only man in a sorority house,” says oncologist Mitchell Berger of Grady Health System in Atlanta, Georgia. “The resources and posters that you see out in public have women on them.
“It makes it somewhat of a lonely journey.”
For some men, understanding and accepting a breast cancer diagnosis can be difficult. Berger says, “I think that a large part of it is they don’t realize that they have breast tissue that can develop into breast cancer.”
Morley says he was in denial about his illness. “It’s almost embarrassing to look back on it,” he said. Now 52, he lives in a suburb south of Atlanta. After years of managing lumber yards, he had started his own construction company in 2003. He felt the first pain in his breast about a year later. Money was tight so he didn’t have health insurance.
To read more, click: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/05/30/hm.male.breast.cancer/index.html
Male Breast Cancer
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