THERE'S NO BOX FOR THAT
published in Voice Male, 2011


I had my first mammogram last Tuesday.  I’m almost 42 and felt that I had avoided the inevitable breast vice grip long enough.  A recent visit to an old friend who just had completed chemo, radiation, and reconstructive surgery prompted me to finally bite the bullet.  To my knowledge, no one in my family had ever had breast cancer.  Somehow I always thought that I was immune to this beast which ravages 1 in 9 women, sometime during their life. I have little stress, love my work, sleep well, eat a high-soy vegetarian diet, exercise and practice yoga regularly.  Of course, my first flute teacher boasted this same healthy lifestyle yet the disease took her at only 37.  So, I should have known better.  But this is not actually a story about my own surprising diagnosis.  I just got my results yesterday.  The letter said that all the findings were normal.  One down.  However, a recent turn of events finds me a bit more nervous about future tests, wondering if the cards are no longer stacked in my favor.

My parents visited us in Vancouver for the holidays.  They arrived on December 19th, just two days after my Dad found it. 

Honey, the doctors have found a lump.

Where Daddy?

Well, I never had big tits before, but, believe it or not, it’s in my breast.

Oh, that’s weird.  But I guess that means it could be anything.  Men don’t get breast cancer.

I know.  But they did a biopsy just to be safe.  I won’t have the results until I get back to Arizona.

Apparently, his interest in protecting me from the truth, at least until the holidays were over, prevented him from telling me what else the doctors said.  I am not one to worry.  I reminded myself. Lots of people find lumps.   Barrons never get cancer. But then, I got real.  Actually, four years ago, my Dad’s brother went in for a routine colonoscopy on a Friday when they found a small localized tumor which they surgically removed the following Wednesday.  He didn’t need chemo or any other therapy.  He doesn’t even consider himself a cancer survivor.  Just a bump in the road.  So, I was still sure that my Dad’s lump was just fine.  At least that’s what I was going to tell myself in order to fully enjoy the first ski vacation we’d had together in 12 years.  And, of course, there was the Feast of the Seven Fishes to prepare.  A decadent, six course meal that had been a treasured Christmas Eve tradition in my mother’s Southern Italian family for years.

The holidays passed with the usual over-indulging, out-of-tune Christmas carols with my Dad at the keyboard, and general good cheer.   But as soon as Boxing Day, I began to notice the pall that hung over my parents usually chipper demeanors.  In fact, as former captains of their respective high school football and cheerleading teams,  their excessive conviviality normally rivaled that of a Kelly Ripa on Ecstasy.  But over Saturday brunch, they were both unusually quiet and distracted.  We went through with our plans to visit the Aquarium.  But upon returning home for a leftovers lunch, I finally asked,

So, is one of you going to tell me about the elephant in the room?

My mom spoke first.

We already know it’s not just a cyst.  The sonogram results were immediate and revealed that it’s a mass.

Sonogram?  Neither of you even mentioned that they already ran other tests.  But aren’t lots of masses still benign?

With more fear than I’ve ever seen on my invincible father’s face, he said,

It was just the pessimism in the doctor’s face.  He said he didn’t like the look of it.  I’m just really nervous and discouraged.

Now it was my turn to be the cheerleader. 

Well, there’s no point worrying about it until we know.

But, of course, for the next four days until the results came, that’s all any of us could do.

I took them to the airport on Monday morning and cried the whole way home, just releasing the hypothetical grief that I was terrified I might have to face.  Of course, I knew I would one day lose my parents.  But they are both so unusually healthy and youthful.  And three of my grandparents lived to over 90.  So, I thought that inevitability was still decades away.   It shook me o the core imagining that I have been wrong.

Male breast cancer, I googled crazily as soon as I returned home.  Never, I repeat, never use the internet during a health scare.  Within five minutes, I had my stomach in knots.  My mother had mentioned that his lump was just under his nipple.  She even told me I could touch it if I wanted, but I declined thinking this was an invasion of my dad’s privacy.   But it turns out that’s exactly where all male breast cancer is located.   And it most commonly hits men 60-70, due to hormonal changes at that age.  My dad is 69.  Strangely, it’s even more common amongst Jews.  My grandparents were Jewish immigrants fro Russia.  This was not looking good. Then I read the clincher,

Only 1% of lumps found to be masses in men’s breasts are benign.

Holy *&^%, there’s a 99% chance that my father has breast cancer! 

And that was not the worst statistic that I learned.  Unfortunately,  90% of male breast tumors are already metastasized - three times the rate of spreadable cancers in women’s breasts due to late detection.  Now, I was totally freaked.  But there was a silver lining.  The lucky 1 % had growths that were called fibroadenoma.  Though I was never normally one to be superstitious,I typed that word into my computer 64 times (my lucky number) trying to influence the fates.  But secretly, I realized the unlikelihood of this fortune.  So, I prayed at the top of a mountain, in a yoga class, before bed, while driving, anywhere I could - that at least his cancer had not spread.  Ductal carcinoma in situ.  I never thought I’d be memorizing such medical terms.  But I figured that this localized form of breast cancer that only required surgery and no chemo or radiation was the best of the worst news that I could hope for at his point.  

In the meantime, I spoke to my brother every day until the “verdict”.  He was even more of a wreck than me since his wife’s father had just died of lung cancer only three months earlier.   When Wednesday came, I found myself useless until 1 PM, the time that I knew my father would be visiting the lab for the results.   It took two hours after that for him to call. 

Suspicious but inconclusive.

My family optimism had apparently rubbed off on me to some degree.  I chose to take this to be good news since I’d never heard of a biopsy being  unable to detect an actual cancer.  If it was truly aggressive, of course it would be obvious.  But we wouldn’t know for certain until the following Monday.  Not knowing is absolutely the worst part.  Then, our wait was finally over.  My father was in the lucky 10%!  The marble under his nipple was a localized tumor with no signs of having spread!

I never thought that learning I had cancer would feel like winning the lottery!  Mom and I already bought the champagne, we’re so relieved!  But, believe it or not, your father’s having a mastectomy in a couple of weeks.

Great, now you have an excuse to go out and by yourself a chestful of new bras!

I got my sarcastic sense of humor from him.  And I was feeling elated to think that there were now dozens of years of his dry jokes ahead of me.

This anxiety-provoking experience taught me so much.  I didn’t even know men could get breast cancer.  It’s rarity was  reinforced when I completed my mammogram survey:

Question #!:
Is there any history of breast cancer in your family?

There was not even a box for Father.   And I would not have checked it anyway, since it was still the day before his results came and I was hardly about to jinx him.  Through all of this, I learned that I was not alone in my ignorance.  So, I’ve written this piece to bring light to this important health concern in the hopes that people will let their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons know that women are not the only ones who should give themselves a little once over in the shower every now and then.