BS: Male breast cancer

Subject: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 09:00 PM

Anyone have any experiences? know anyone?

Before you ask, yeah... it may be... no, no details before the clinical exam - it might be a benign lump but it will take a while to find out... we'll see... yes, it's me and it hurts.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: bobad
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 09:05 PM

I knew someone who had it but don't have many details except that I think it was treated successfully.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 09:26 PM

How about some Marines?

Saw this on a news program awhile back.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:17 PM

Thanks. It's one of those "Huh?" moments for me. Read only a bit of my initial findings on the net net and found out it IS what it IS. I had no idea.

Bit of a shock, really. Mine might be whatever it might be but it certainly opened my eyes to read about it.

Apparently, a monthly self breast exam is not just for women. I may never have even "found" it if I hadn't tried to peer out my bedroom window to the far right. The window bottom is chin high. I had to lean into the wall heavily to find out what that noise was... and it hurt.

Ye lads take heed. Examine yer breasts (and, of course, as many others as you can) on a regular basis. Seriously.

Seriously. (I gotta say that again because I still duuno why this is new to me... did I just miss something that everyone else knows about?)

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: LilyFestre
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:20 PM

We had a man with breast cancer speak at one of the Relays For Life...many people don't know that men can get breast cancer too. Hope everything is ok with you Gnu.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:34 PM

I'll be okay, thanks. Just never knew 1% of breast cancer cases were in males. Not pleased this is "news" to me. This should be common knowledge. I should not have to search the internet on the off chance of hearing a strange noise outside my house.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:51 PM

It is something that's fairly rare in men, but a sufficient number of "well known" men have had it for there to have been enough reports that most men should know that it's possible.

Early diagnosis and treatment give an excellent chance of a cure. Ignoring symptoms or failure to recognize them for too long gives results similar to those for women.

The lesser amount of surrounding tissue often makes a lump more easily detected in males, so earlier detection should be the norm; but obesity can offset that advantage and male reluctance to talk about "such things" with their physicians seems to contribute to cases far more advanced than they should be by the time advice is obtained. There is also some evidence that physicians' reluctance** to talk to male patients about "such things" may also be a factor contributing to less favorable results than should be seen.

** I've always been a little reluctant to see a physician twice if I can make them blush at the first appointment, and I don't believe I've every been shy about testing them. I recommend the same test especially for men. And if you have a problem discussing anything with your doc(s) - - GET OVER IT NOW. Being shy can kill you.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:58 PM

Gee... I got a half dozen raunchy jokes about that, JiK. But this ain't the thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: catspaw49
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:00 PM

Gnu, you know I wish you the best. I assume that this is something you just noticed? Please? The biggest problem in male breast cancer is as John said, a later diagnosis which is never good.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:07 PM

Spaw... Yeah... just noticed a few weeks ago. We'll see. No worry.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 02:37 AM

My wife is a consultant breast surgeon. In our neck of the woods it is slightly below 1 in 100 but only 40 miles away it is far more prevalent.

What ever, the prognosis for early diagnosis is very good. Without preempting anything here, lumps and swollen tissue can indicate far less serious issues too and benign lumps in males is rather common.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: bobad
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 06:43 AM

Lipomas or fatty lumps are not uncommon in that region too.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Penny S.
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 07:56 AM

Thoughts with you. I found out it was possible some time ago when discussing related issues with a radiographer friend - I'd said something along the lines of "if men had to go through that, there would be a better way" and she told me they did.

Reiterate - check, along with your other bits.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: kendall
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 07:24 PM

We are all made of the same clay, but it is arranged differently in some of us.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 08:03 PM

A friend of mine had breast cancer when he was very young, about 21. It was very usual, but it was caught and they did surgery to remove the cancer and it didn't leave him disfigured. That was probably 40 years ago.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 08:14 PM

"We are all made of the same clay, but it is arranged differently in some of us."   

Yeah Kendall, you're right............and that explains why your genitals look like a half eaten cocktail wienie flanked by 2 dessicated raisins.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 08:19 PM

Thanks, Penny. But, no need... it's not likely serious in any way.

I just find it odd, as I stated above, that this is not common knowledge to me. I hope this thread informs others like me who were in the dark on this. A monthly self breast exam is for EVERYone... regardless of sex.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 07 Mar 13 - 12:20 AM

My ex had a biopsy done on a breast lump about a year ago. He posted about it on FB. I haven't heard anything more about it, so I guess it was negative.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: olddude
Date: 07 Mar 13 - 11:41 AM

You are scaring me, what is going on email me bro

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 07 Mar 13 - 01:57 PM

My father had breast cancer. I was pretty young at the time and I wasn't foresighted enough to think it was anything I should learn about, so I can't tell you much. I think he had some tissue removed on both sides. I don't know how it was discovered. I don't remember seeing any scars on him afterwards, but he was pretty hairy-chested and I seldom saw him without a shirt, and I never wanted to look closely anyway. I honestly couldn't tell you whether he had nipples or not after the surgery. I didn't notice any deformity, ever.

I'm guessing he was in his 50's when he had the cancer, and he died of heart failure at age 85. There was no recurrence of cancer. That's all I know.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 07 Mar 13 - 03:06 PM

Dan... you first... you have been posting so little lately and, so odd, and I JUST posted on your last thread regarding an update.

In any case, no scare intended and no scare exists... it's a lump because it's a lump and until it's not a lump it gets lumped in with the lumps, like it or lump it. (With apologies to Jean Chretien. I hope I don't get strangled for that. Dat lad got da mitts on im like da viiiice grip, la.)

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Mar 13 - 06:14 PM

I'm a 8 month male breast cancer survivor looking for other survivors.
We need to get the word out about it.
It shouldn't be "news" to anyone. Men need to check themselves out.

Bob in Connecticut

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Mar 13 - 10:32 AM

Bob, congratulations on getting in and getting treatment.

Sample of the stories out there in Googleland about the surprise of male breast cancer.

There is a male breast cancer information available online.

Male breast cancer support group search results.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: LilyFestre
Date: 08 Mar 13 - 11:34 AM

HOORAY BOB!!!!!

XOXOXOX

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 12:22 PM

Not to change the subject, but to add something to it, there have been a very few other recent complaints about other things that are too often considered "women's diseases" or "men's diseases" that do affect both and are too often ignored when they occur in "the wrong sex."

A new commentary suggests that OSTEOPOROSIS is another problem generally considered as likely only in women that is increasingly affecting men. (The emphasis is on "old men" but it's something that can't be "cured" very successfully once it's noticed, but that can be prevented (or slowed) if appropriate intervention is used early enough.)

Men get osteoporosis, too -- but they probably don't know it
By Brian Alexander
NBC News updated 3/20/2013

...

Male osteoporosis has been a silent problem for decades but is becoming more prevalent as Baby Boomers age, doctors say. Osteoporosis-related fractures in men cost $4.1 billion in direct medical expenses as of 2005, with the total expected to rise to more than $6 billion by 2025, according to a 2006 study in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Yet men, many other doctors, and the health care system itself, ... all seem largely unaware of male osteoporosis.

"I can tell you when I went to medical school, osteoporosis and men were never used in the same sentence," Robert Adler, chief of endocrinology and metabolism at Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, says. "I think it is still thought by many clinicians to be a disorder of women."

When the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently issued its controversial new recommendations discouraging the use of Vitamin D and calcium supplements to prevent broken bones, there was virtually no mention of male osteoporosis. A few doctors have been trying to raise awareness, with some small success, but there's a long way to go, Adler says.

In fact, men account for more than 29 percent -- about 595,000 -- of the estimated 2 million osteoporosis-related bone fractures in the United States each year, and more than 30 percent of hip fractures, according to the 2006 bone study.

Men also have far greater risk of dying as a result of a hip fracture than women do. Experts suggest men who have hip fractures may be older and sicker than women who do, or that the lengthy period of enforced inactivity after a fracture is more detrimental to men.

"With men, one out of three are dead after a hip fracture within a year," Adler says. "And those who survive have a lower chance of being independent."

Most risk factors of osteoporosis in men are similar to the risks for women -- smoking, low vitamin D and calcium levels, lack of weight-bearing exercise, hormonal changes with aging, genetics. But men also carry unique risks. Prostate cancer patients may undergo bone-damaging, long-term androgen deprivation therapy to keep male hormones low.

"We did a study of 115 men from our urology clinic [who were undergoing androgen deprivation therapy] and about one-third had osteoporosis," Adler says. "Totally unsuspected…None of the patients had been asked to get a bone density [test] by their primary physician or anybody else."

Steroids like glucocorticoids for a condition such as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) can also hasten bone loss.

Women are often screened for the disease starting at menopause. But because you can't feel osteoporosis and male patients don't complain about it, their doctors often don't think to screen for it.

Even when they do, that screening might not be complete. Moore, for example, unlike most men, had been receiving DXA scans, an X-ray test for bone density. It did show he had osteopenia, lower bone density than optimum, but not osteoporosis. His physician didn't think he needed therapy.

While DXA is important, it's not definitive for osteoporosis, says Dr. Robert Pignolo, director of the Ralston-Penn Clinic for Osteoporosis and Related Bone Disorders at Perelman, and a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who treated Moore. "A DXA scan tells you nothing about how the bones are put together," he said.

Instead, a question-based screening tool called FRAX, available free online, can be used by any doctor (or anybody) to assess a patient's risk for osteoporosis.

To help prevent the condition, weight bearing exercise -- which does not only mean lifting weights, but doing any work against gravity -- is especially important because it stimulates bone growth and strengthening. Cycling and swimming, for example, while excellent cardiovascular workouts, don't do much to work the skeleton.

Drugs to treat osteoporosis are tested almost exclusively on women to get FDA approval, but they also work for men.

Men should ask their primary care doctors about osteoporosis and suggesting a FRAX screening, says Pignolo.

"If a doctor has all the information at his fingertips," he says, "he could complete the screening in five minutes."


[Something we old men, or those who expect to get older, should perhaps discuss with our docs before it's too late to do much about it?]

(I'll note that the only health issue I've seen recently that seems to be exclusively confined to men, and is exceedingly rare in women, has something to do with zippers that show up in ER facilities, but that's another issue.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: selby
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 04:04 PM

Strange I have just found this. I met an old male friend that I have not seen for a number of years on Saturday night and he was telling me he has breast cancer he is half way through is radiography with an excellent chance of recovery. I was astounded I think i sat with my mouth open for a short while not realising that men could get it.
Keith

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 04 Apr 13 - 05:19 PM

FINALLY! April 19... mamogram (manogram?) and ultrasound. The sucker HURTS!

Hehehehe... he was feeling me up, both nipples, and I started to laugh. He was puzzled. I asked, "How for an hour, darlin?"

Made ME laugh!

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Apr 13 - 07:14 PM

Different strokes for different folks...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: GUEST,Little Robyn
Date: 04 Apr 13 - 11:09 PM

If it hurts it may not be cancer. Years back I had a lump that was quite large and it caught under my car seat belt. Very painful. But it was a cist with some sort of fluid in it and just needed a big needle to drain out the fluid and it was gone.
The little lump that was cancer, 3 years ago, was small, hard and painless. Yes, I know I'm not a male but I'm not very big.
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 13 - 06:47 AM

Oops! "How MUCH for... ?"

Bobert... he'll get used to my oddball humour yet.

Robyn... thanks for the info.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: LilyFestre
Date: 05 Apr 13 - 08:05 AM

Gnu...being able to laugh with the medical folks is priceless and it will make them remember you (in a world filled with so many bodies that we all begin to blend).

Love it!

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Becca72
Date: 05 Apr 13 - 09:39 AM

April 19 is the date of your mammogram, Gnu? I'm having my first one the day before LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Apr 13 - 09:51 AM

I'm old enough that I've had a few. I wish they'd warm those plates before they crush each boob. The chill adds insult to injury.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 04:01 PM

Are you okay?

Yeah, no... (she hit the foot pedal again)... problemMMMMM!

Well... the ultrasound tech said it looks like gynecomastia. More like gynecoNastia when the xray tech put the peddle to the metal. I don't mind pain. Never did mind pain. What I do mind is when someone says this may sting a bit. Screw that! Tell me it's gonna hurt. And, fer Fsake, don't ask me if it hurts. When it does, yer probably gonna know without having to ask. It's called "readin my facial expression".

So, great news for me. Lefty is still pissed off and he even says so when I roll over in bed but he'll get over it.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Deckman
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 04:22 PM

Male breast cancer is NOT funny. It's nothing to either laugh about or be embarrased about. I had a similar scare a few years ago. It turned out O.K. By the way ... the mammogram REALLY HURTS.. The nurse who did the exam on me said it's much more painfull for males as we don't have any surrounding "tissue" to cushion the area. bob(deckman)nelson

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: maeve
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 04:25 PM

Great news that it's not cancerous, gnu.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 04:53 PM

My brother-in-law, Who lived half a continent away from us, died some years ago, "suddenly" as we saw it. We only heard about his death in retrospect, too late for the funeral. Somehow we gathered that it was liver cancer.

About a year and a half or two years after his death, my wife, on the phone with his widow, asked some further questions about the "liver cancer".

Finally it came out: He'd died of breast cancer. He'd been to a few (incompetent?) doctors over quite some period of time, I believe, and when a diagnosis was finally arrived at, the breast cancer had metastasized, and it was too late for any effective treatment.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 05:28 PM

Deckman... "Male breast cancer is NOT funny."

I agree. Making jokes about what happened to me, however, is. I have made many merry over my lifetime by telling of certain of my woes in a comical manner. Laff and the world laffs with you. Cry and yer screwed.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 09:21 PM

Oops! I've rarely been accused of being a woman of few words, but that last post was a new personal best!!

What I meant to write was, I think it is good to hang on to your sense of humor!

Will the ultrasound tech's opinion soon be confirmed by a doctor?

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Apr 13 - 03:08 AM

Well I am glad it is the less serious if rather painful option but someday lad I am going to get enough together to come ower there and skelp ye fur scarein me.

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: gnu
Date: 22 Apr 13 - 05:49 AM

CL... I assume it'll be the "tech" that does that, mostly because I might have called her a tech in error. She may be an expert in interpretation. Long explanation warning : It takes 13 years to become a fully trained radiologist here. Now whether she is fully trained in all aspects or has completed her training in "ultrasound", I do not know but, if she has, she is a doc. Of course, I assume each case must pass by the head cheese of radiology or a delegate and, yes, that would be a doc. The simple fact that she said "it looks like..." indicates to me that she has the ability to make such a determination. Now, if an ultrasounder was ultrasounding various organs and structures for the determination of possible tummy ache causes, they wouldn't say squat but this was a very specific "test".
'What is the cause of?' versus 'What is this?' kinda thing, eh? Does that make sense or am I gettin on everyones' tits?

Thanks, Megan. I appreciate every skelp. Just don't save em up, eh? >;-)

Yes, it was a long way to go for a joke, but I am dedicated. How many skelps am I up to, Megan?

Subject: RE: BS: Male breast cancer
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Apr 13 - 12:05 PM

You are top of the league table in fact I have had tae invent a robot tae help its the Skelpomatic mark 4.