As someone living with metastatic breast cancer, I was disappointed that the article about a surge in breast cancer diagnoses in younger women didn’t discuss symptoms or risk reduction.
A previous letter to the editor talked about lifestyle changes (diet, exercise) but lifestyle changes do not prevent breast cancer on an individual basis. When you live for 10 years with metastatic breast cancer, like I have, you meet innumerable people who did everything “right” and still got a breast cancer diagnosis. It is important that a patient not blame themselves. Breast cancer occurs for many reasons and many combinations of those reasons.
Some tools to consider beyond lifestyle changes are:
Knowing your risk: Talk to family members about family history of any type of cancer and talk to your doctor.If you have a first-degree relative with breast cancer, a diagnosis of atypical hyperplasia, extremely dense breasts, or previous radiation for another cancer, consult a high-risk breast clinic where they can do a more thorough risk analysis. Know your breasts.
The American Cancer Society has recommended women not do breast self-exams, but it’s critical to know your breasts. Beyond a lump or a bump, other signs are an inverted nipple, skin dimpling, bloody or discolored nipple discharge, an inflamed breast, any change in breast size or shape, very itchy nipples, unintended weight loss, unusually heavy or swollen breasts and breast pain, which doctors sometimes discount but is a symptom.
I would add unexplained fatigue to the list, which was my very first — and ignored — symptom. If diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, at any age, it is important to know signs of metastatic progression, which frequently shows up in bones, lungs, liver and brain, as well as other locations depending on the cancer subtype.
Approximately 30% of early-stage diagnoses recur at some point — even 20 years later — as Stage IV, which has a median prognosis of three to five years survival.
Annual deaths from metastatic breast cancer are around 43,000 in the U.S., and a recent analysis by Yale researchers found that 60% of those deaths occurred in women originally diagnosed as stages I or II. In this case, knowledge is power.
Martha Carlson, Brookfield; co-host, “Our MBC Life”
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Flattery goes far with Trump
I almost did a spit take with my coffee reading John Houston’s published letter on Tuesday (“Many Israelis support Trump”). In his letter, he asks, “If … Trump is a Hitler sympathizer and a ‘fascist,’ why have the Israelis named a Golan Heights community, square and train station after him?”
Gee, John, did it ever occur to you that Trump, as Kamala Harris and her many Republican supporters have pointed out, falls for flattery every time? Benjamin Netanyahu is no fool. To appease members of his far-right cabinet and to assure that Trump will not oppose any expansion into the occupied territories and the Golan Heights, all it takes is the simple act of naming a few things after Trump to assuage his small ego.
That’s precisely why Trump is so dangerous: a “kind” word and compliment from any dictator (Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong Un and their ilk) and Trump laps it up like a kitty cat lapping up fresh milk. He’s an easy target.
Todd Lakin, East Garfield Park