A year ago, breast cancer took the life of a dear friend of mine. She was only 45 and had four fierce years with it in her bones. The disease was diagnosed when it was stage four. My friend was one of the best people I have ever known. She was funny, silly, well read, kind, literate and thoughtful. M. liked dogs, Downton Abby, Trader Joe’s everything, a day at the lake and books by the yard. She took the time to present me with a knitted baby blanket when my daughter was born, help create quilts for people in need between chemo sessions and bake Irish soda bread while I showed her how to make hamantashen.
She was an excellent parent who left behind a darling eleven year old son and an eighteen year old daughter she had nutured into a college scholarship. M. was the kind of person who made my baby laugh and made all of us around her smile with her innate good qualities. The world is a worse place because she is no longer with us.
The best way I can think to honor her memory is by reminding women to get a mammogram and get any suspcious lump checked. Breast cancer is a miserable, evil disease. It slammed so much at her and she fought it with the most courage I have ever witnessed in another person. Please follow all breast care guidelines and help us continue this important fight.
Thanks for that link, Wesley Clark. Very interesting. Problem is, people who view several sides of an issue and conclude that “it’s complicated” don’t get a lot of press, huh?
For every woman who’s breasts you X-ray, you have a chance of just giving them cancer from that. And most lumps aren’t tumors. It’s not anywhere near as black and white as it sounds. I’m sorry to hear about your friend, but sometimes your number comes up.
So women should all go out and get mammograms based on your silly N=1 anecdote? What if instead your friend had a bad reaction to a vaccine? What then?
Maybe you should base your recommendations on actual science, such as a Cochrane review of 7 trials including over 600,000 women showing no evidence that mammography screening improved mortality:
Silly anecdote? A friend died too early. A good friend of mine died last year in circumstances that sucked. She died because a lump in her breast was something neither she nor her fucking incompetent doctor took it seriously. Yes, she probably could have been saved by a mammogram.
So when I wrote:
I kind of thought my meaning was obvious. My god some of you are such pedantic fucking pain in the asses.
Routine mammograms are still the standard of care for detection of breast cancer. There may be some legitimate debate about the scheduling of mammograms, but no one doubts that they can save lives. The evidence against having them too often boils down to cost, increased unnecessary follow up tests and extra worry. However, I doubt anyone has died from getting a mammogram, while people do die from missed cancerous lesions.
The X-ray dose in a mammogram is not going to give you cancer.
The OP is not saying have one every week. She’s reminding us to get lumps checked out and to get routine preventative ones (at whatever interval makes you comfortable). She lost a dear friend to this disease and is honoring her memory by a gentle reminder to get preventative care.
I think some of these responses could have been a lot more humane given the reason the OP is posting. The very mild medical advice she is suggesting is standard and routine and not ridiculous at all.
I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. She sounded marvelous.
I’ve become jaded about medicine personally. It isn’t a public good like firefighters, it is a business dependent on sales, and you sell a product by exaggerating the benefits (both the quality of benefit and the number of people who need it) and hiding/ignoring the dangers. Lots of people who undergo medicine see no benefit (look up the NNTs sometime of common medical interventions, numbers needed to treat to prevent 1 complication), and side effects of health care are the 3rd leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer (killing 200-300k people a year in the US alone).
So it is complicated, and I don’t know the answer. I know I’m not smart or informed enough to navigate things, but I don’t know who is who I can ask for advice.
My mammogram found IDC (invasive ductal carcinoma-- so-called “Stage 1”) this past February. At less than one centimeter, the tumor was way too small to have been felt by hand. I had a lumpectomy and radiation. I’m on Arimidex for five years. I’m very satisfied with everything.
The question that has been raised lately is whether “Stage 0,” DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) should be aggressively treated or just watched. THIS is the controversy. I’ve had at least three friends who have chosen to have mastectomies based on a diagnosis of DCIS. Recent studies show that this course might not actually be any more life-saving than doing nothing. One of these friends said after my lumpectomy that if she had it to do over again, she might not do the radical bi-lateral… she just wanted to do the most that could be done to make sure she’d never have to deal with it again. Alas, there is NO way in this life to make sure you never have to deal withi cancer again.
If you get a mammogram and find that you have cancer Stages 1-4, there’s no question that some treatment is necessary, from not bad (mine) to seriously aggressive. The problem is that ANY cancer diagnosis scares the crap out of a person and there can be a rush to treatment that may not be necessary at the time. But who wants to sit around and wait to see if their cancer gets bigger? Even waiting for the results of a biopsy can drive some people nuts.
So, in conclusion, it’s not the mammograms that are a problem. They are a good thing. The problem is keeping your wits about you IF and WHEN you get a diagnosis of Stage 0- DCIS.
No, but the biopsy part can kill you. That’s where they stick a big needle into the suspicious shadow on X-ray while you’re knocked out.
Now, you might wonder, that sounds like a really safe surgery as far as those go. And it is. But, apparently, a vast number of women have various lumps and nodules that leave shadows on x-ray and only a tiny number actually have cancer.
Lavender Blue, one of my dear friends from college also discovered she had Stage 4 breast cancer almost four years ago. It’s now settled in her spine and hip. It was discovered when she switched doctors and the new doctor had her schedule a mammogram. Her old doctor never had her have one and it never dawned on her to ask.
We got in touch again not too long ago after many years and miles apart. The first thing she said to me was ,“Please, promise me you’ve had one recently and if you haven’t, DO IT. I’m the last person I ever would’ve thought would have this.”
I also lost a friend to breast cancer - uninsured, she didn’t get mammograms. (She died before the Obamacare). And my sister is a survivor - her lump was found because when you are breastfeeding a six month old, you spend a lot of time manhandling your own breasts. I also have a cousin and an aunt who are survivors.
If I didn’t get yearly mammograms, then discovered I had stage IV cancer, I’d kick myself. I have very dense breasts, so the chances are high I’ll get called in for unnecessary rescreenings (although it hasn’t happened yet) and also high that they’ll miss something. But both those risks in mammograms are something I’m willing to take.
I offset my mammogram with my doctors appointment by six months - so every six months a medical professional is evaluating the state of my breast tissue.
That’s up to the person. My dear mom knew she had a lump in her breast but never got hers diagnosed or treated because she chose to let it go. She figured if it wasn’t cancer she’d be fine and if it was it would kill her. She also didn’t trust doctors and had an unwavering faith in a better life after this one. Ten years later it did kill her but they were a good ten years with many memorable times and no medical treatment to deal with. I hope I can be that brave if I realize something is going on with me.
