{"id":755,"date":"2008-06-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-breast-cancer-i-had-never-even-heard-of-male-breast-cancer\/"},"modified":"2008-06-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T00:00:00","slug":"condition-breast-cancer-i-had-never-even-heard-of-male-breast-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-breast-cancer-i-had-never-even-heard-of-male-breast-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"I Had Never Even Heard of Male Breast Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"
"Men don't realize, we have all the same breast parts that a woman has."(ROBERT KAITZ)It was funny the way we caught my breast cancer. I had a sore throat<\/a>, so I went to the doctor. I had a list, you know, "By the way, I also have acid reflux…" and he gave me a fistful of prescriptions. Then I said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot, I have this lump." I'd had it behind my left nipple for more than a year. I figured it was a cyst. There was no pain or discharge. I had never even heard of male breast cancer.<\/p>\n But the doctor told me, "You don't get cysts there." He sent me immediately for a mammogram and a sonogram. That doctor saw it was a solid mass and said, "You gotta do a needle biopsy." And that's when I found out it was cancer.<\/p>\n It was October 2006. I was like, "Oh, my God." You wonder what you've left out in life. I have two great sons that I raised myself. My youngest son is in the military; he was in Iraq while I was diagnosed. I didn't have a will yet. Then there's the fear of chemotherapy and treatments<\/a>. My father died of colon cancer, and I was the one who brought him for chemo and treatment. Chemo was a lot different then; he was violently ill. But that scared me.<\/p>\n More about treatment<\/p>\n My general practitioner told me to see a doctor who's well-known in the breast cancer arena. So I decided to go with Dr. Julie Lange at Johns Hopkins. She said the first thing before surgery is a needle biopsy for my lymph nodes, and that came back positive as well. We scheduled the surgery just two weeks after.<\/p>\n Next Page: Treatment routine<\/a> [ pagebreak ]Same treatment routine as women<\/b> Then I did chemo. First I did AC<\/a>. I had no vomiting, no nausea, a little fatigue—I was truly blessed. The next one was Taxol. I had bone pain—it felt like someone was twisting my fibula like it was a licorice stick. After the Taxol, I got a little reprieve for a couple of weeks, then I started seven weeks of radiation.<\/p>\n Later they put me on tamoxifen. Like most men, my cancer is estrogen-receptor positive. I had so much estrogen in my body—I'd get hot flashes and was moody. Watching a movie, tears would pour off my face. But the tamoxifen was causing me headaches, depression, hot flashes.<\/p>\n Now, I'm taking indole-3-carbinol and DIM instead—natural estrogen suppressors found in broccoli and cauliflower. I learned about these from doctors at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium last December in Texas. They're working great. I feel amazing, back to normal.<\/p>\n\n
We did a radical mastectomy on the left, and they took out 25 lymph nodes at the same time. Men don't realize, we have all the same breast parts that a woman has, like milk ducts—just not the extra fat tissue. But unlike for a woman, in a man a mastectomy is not super-noticeable. I just don't have the movement in my left arm that I used to. If I try to extend myself too far, it hurts. It's also totally numb under my left armpit and in my left chest. And I do not have a nipple on the left side. It'd be one hell of a bar bet—or a bar joke.<\/p>\n