Willow Glen Resident

Letters & Opinions

When friends are diagnosed with breast cancer

By Moryt Milo

Sometimes a person just doesn't know how to respond. Within the span of three weeks, two friends have told me they have breast cancer. I felt like someone had whacked me with a 2-by-4.

The first time it was my son's best friend's mom, who is only 42. She took me aside and said she was diagnosed with a cancerous lump and scheduled for a mastectomy. I asked her how she discovered it, and she said through a self-exam. She told me on a Sunday and had the surgery that Thursday.

She wanted to make sure her son had a friend around to spend time doing teen stuff while she was recovering.

We stood out on the front lawn, and I lost track of the time as she calmly explained that if all went well, there would also be a plastic surgeon in the room who would perform the reconstruction surgery. For some odd reason my mind kept thinking of a Picasso painting during his Cubism period. I had a hard time understanding how this could happen to a young woman who was health-conscious and a positive thinker.

That Thursday I kept looking at my watch, waiting and wondering. Finally, when I thought enough time had gone by, I called her husband. Everything went like clockwork. The doctors said it was one of the smoothest procedures they had encountered. The physicians were confident they had gotten all the cancerous cells, and the reconstruction went better than anticipated.

I was so happy that I wanted to cry. "Thank God," was all I kept saying.

Then my joy turned to shock once more when one of my close friends told me two weeks later she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.

How is that possible? What in the world is going on? So I began reading about the disease and its insidious behavior. Two startling statistics stood out: Every 14 minutes a woman dies of breast cancer, and every three minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.

No wonder the American Cancer Society has so many fundraisers and big-name sponsors for cancer research.

What struck me is the random way it attacks. The disease doesn't appear to care whether a person has good or bad eating habits, about breast size, lifestyle or age. Neither woman had a family history of breast cancer, which makes the "how did this happen?" question all the more elusive.

There was one similarity, however; both women discovered the lumps through self-exams, and my second friend had a mammogram just eight months earlier. When I heard that, one thing became absolutely clear: Self-exams are lifesavers and can't be stressed enough.

Then there was another interesting point. My first friend told me that when she asked the doctor where could it have come from, he told her it didn't happen overnight. He said it built up from years of stress or aggravation or other traumatic events. The body is finally manifesting what has been festering.

That kind of information should have us all making a beeline for the next available yoga class or at least counting to 10 and taking long, deep breaths. Maybe some of the preventive behavior is that simple.

Moryt Milo is the editor of Willow Glen Resident. She can be reached at 408.200.1051 or via email at mmilo@community-newspapers.com.