A Lump Proves To Be Cancerous After 30 Years
- Angus McKay, 50, noticed a lump on his lift side over 30 years ago. It started to become painful a year ago and at his wife’s insistence he saw the doctor and was diagnosed with breast cancer.
- He managed to avoid chemotherapy or radiation and is now cancer-free after having a mastectomy. He is now on hormone therapy and for the next five years will take tamoxifen, a drug used to treat hormone-positive breast cancer.
- The most common sign of breast cancer in men, as it is in women, is a lump in the breast. Lumps around the collar bone or armpit are also common when the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. These lumps or swellings are often painless and can sometimes be too deep to be felt by hand or too small for the naked eye to see.
Angus McKay, 50, managed to avoid chemotherapy or radiation and is now cancer-free after having a mastectomy.
Read MoreHe adds: “I just thought it was something I had and that I’d torn a muscle slightly, and it healed with a little scar lump sort of thing.”
That little lump started to give McKay trouble about a year ago while he was away from home and working in Norway.
“I was lying on my left side and waking up in the night with a burning, itching sensation and noticed the lump had got a little bit bigger and elongated,” recalls McKay. “I noticed discomfort on the trip before and didn’t really think about it, and I was like ‘what’s going on here?’. It was more an annoyance than anything else.”
Lucky for McKay, his wife encouraged him to get the lump checked, having watched family members battle cancer.
“I absolutely credit her for saving my life. I was in two minds whether or not to say anything at all to her and just leave it,” says McKay. “And in Helen’s words, ‘if I’d have left it another three or four months, then it could have been an entirely different outcome.'”
McKay went to see his doctor a year ago and then returned to work thinking little of the visit.
While away, his doctor advised that he return for a check-in, at which point things began to move at a rapid rate.
“I went in, and they had a look at it and took three biopsies at the beginning of March. A week later, they phoned and said, ‘yes, it’s estrogen-sensitive cancer, and we need to operate,'” says McKay. “It was all a bit of a whirlwind from there because from that diagnosis to the operation was just about three weeks.”
He had a mastectomy to remove his breast and his inch-long tumor, which successfully rid his body of cancer.
He is now on hormone therapy and will take Tamoxifen, a drug used to treat hormone-positive breast cancer, for the next five years.
The entire thing still feels like a dream, says McKay, and his friends are even more shocked about his diagnosis.
“When I told a few of my friends, they were like ‘but you’re a bloke?'” says McKay.
Symptoms of Male Breast Cancer
The most common sign of breast cancer in men, as it is in women, is a lump in the breast.
Lumps around the collar bone or armpit are also common when the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes.
These lumps or swellings are often painless and can sometimes be too deep to be felt by hand or too small for the naked eye to see.
Other symptoms include:
- Skin dimpling or puckering
- Nipple retraction (turning inward)
- Redness or scaling of the nipple or breast skin
- Discharge from the nipple
Men Get Breast Cancer Too
Detecting Breast Cancer Early
Male breast cancer is just like every other form of cancer in that it is easier to treat if caught early.
Angus McKay waited decades and got lucky that a mastectomy proved effective after all that time.
It is best to call a doctor at the first sign of cancer, though some meen do need a bit of a nudge.
“I play basketball and tennis every weekend. So, on a Sunday in November back in 2007, I came home, I turned on the shower, and as I was taking off my shirt, I guess my left thumb rubbed up against my left breast, and I felt something wet,” recounted Futterweit in a precious interview with SurvivorNet.
He then squeezed the area, and a dark liquid came out, which he showed to his wife. Her response? “Well, you better not do what you normally do, what guys do, and say I think it’s gonna go away.”
Futterweit called his doctor, who prescribed him an antibiotic and ordered a mammogram when that did not treat the problem.
He soon learned that he had a clogged mammary duct as well as a carcinoma in situ.
His doctor suggested that they make an incision, take out the nipple, the breast material, and the sheath and cells underneath. After getting a second opinion, Futterweit agreed that this was the best course of action.
Futterweit then continued to monitor his situation after surgery, which is how in 2016, he again detected cancer early and quickly started treatment.
“I felt a little agitation, if you will, in the same spot where my nipple used to be, and a little five-millimeter pimple showed up,” he explained.
“Went back to the doctor, he did a needle biopsy, and now it’s HER2-positive, and I had 12 weeks of chemo with Herceptin, which cures that gene that I have. And then seven weeks of radiation. Now I’m on Tamoxifen, and that’s where I am today.”
Male Breast Cancer Survivor On Why Men Ignore Symptoms
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