Breast Cancer Awareness: Do you know any man or woman suffering from breast cancer? Cancer has become an epidemic alone.

Everyday I think about breast cancer awareness. I know that some people may find it strange that I include men in the awareness of breast cancer, but there are some men that have been diagnosed with breast cancer and many of them face it with the women that they love, they know or they respect. Breast cancer in men is rare and does occur in much smaller numbers but it happens and it should be acknowledged. Cancer has touched many lives of people that I know and so including men is vital and important.

However, I will focus more specifically on women and breast cancer. I will take another time and place to speak more generally on lung cancer, throat cancer, paranasal sinus cancer, liver cancer, colon cancer, uterus, cervical, and ovarian cancer and many other cancers that face people all over the world. It is cause and a disease that unites people who truly understand how difficult it is to be a friend, a relative, a co-worker, a caregiver or an advocate for a cancer patient.

I attest that it is difficult to hear a person that you love, you know or you care about announce that they have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Your heart drops and your words are stuck in your throat. You do not want to say the wrong thing and you want to be encouraging. However, you also want to know what the diagnosis entails, the type of treatment that is needed and what steps they may need to take, in order to brace for the fight for her life.

You want to hear the best news that everything is fine and nothing was found. However, if something stands out as needing further testing, then one hopes that it was caught early by an ultrasound if you are under the age of 35. If you are roughly not aging, but your driver's license identifies you as being over the age of 40 and have been diagnosed with cancer, you want to hear that the mammogram was normal but if it was not, then you hope that it only detected a small abnormality, which they found early, and determined it was small enough to remove. You want to hear the report that the person will not require radiation and chemotherapy treatment at all. You want to hear that it has been miraculously healed and that it never occurs again in the same breast, in the opposite breast or in any other area of her body. You want to hear that cancer is no longer a disease that she has to face. You always wish for the best. Yet, too many families have braced for the many stories that women have heard for themselves or from friends, relatives, or co-workers.

There are women that never find a lump in their breast but a mammogram or ultrasound and further testing confirms breast cancer. This form of cancer is one of the most aggressive forms of cancers and one of the scariest for her and her family. It is heart breaking for her friends that pray for her quick and diligent recovery and know that this road will be tough. She has eaten healthy, exercised, maintained the correct body mass and body weight, never smoked or drank alcohol and shared a faith that kept her committed and focused on the most important aspects of life for her. I know a woman like her, diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC). This is a woman with no history of breast cancer in her family.

Inflammatory Breast Cancer is a form of cancer that doctors and health professionals never discuss with women in general. The first time that I heard of this disease is when a woman that I have worked with for over 3 years was diagnosed with the disease and had to learn fairly quickly about a form of breast cancer that doctors do not discuss with women nor provide enough testing for. Women are taught about self-exams and signs of problems with the breast related to discharge or pain as major questions often asked of women during visits. In general, there are certain ages when doctors take more seriously problems related problems with the breasts due to a generic number used to determine when women should have mammograms or qualify to have an ultrasound. Maybe, with the increase of the number of young women of ages from teenagers through 70s and up, government regulations and insurance agencies will recognize that early detection and prevention saves lives and costs in the short-term and long-term.

This early detection can exist whether a woman finds a lump or not. We have too many women fighting the battle of their lives to survive. I know women that have survived. I know women fighting breast cancer now. I know families that have lost women to the struggle of breast cancer and who are enduring the same process again. Women must decide the course of action for their treatment with the initial surgery and next best decision for their health. It may be a lumpectomy, a mastectomy, or double mastectomy, lymph node testing to see if the cancer has spread or originated in these areas, radiation, chemotherapy, alternative medicine, or no treatment at all. The choice is between that woman, her doctor and her family. The losing of her hair is hard. Her losing weight, muscle, strength, and moments of hope are hard. The side effects of radiation and chemotherapy are hard. The possibility of blood clots and death are scary, but they fight on and fight hard. They want to live. They want to recover. They want to survive for themselves, their families and to ensure that more research and commitment to securing a cure happens sooner than later. Join these women and men and their families in fighting breast cancer today and everyday forward. God bless them all.

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