In life, we like to think we are in control and one thing that the diagnosis of cancer brings with it is the awareness that we cannot be in control all of the time! When we see high profile women diagnosed with breast cancer our hearts go out to them, and should they die from the disease, then our hearts break for the young families who have lost their beautiful mothers.
But breast cancer doesn’t strike just the young and the famous; cancer is a respecter of no one. Even men can get breast cancer.
Thankfully, over the years our ability to control this disease has improved and continues to improve and I have little doubt that in the next ten years we will start to see that our perception of cancer will change from one that sees it as a ‘death sentence’, to one where we perceive it in much the same way as we see blood pressure today - in other words a very manageable and controllable medical problem.
Remember that it’s less than 60 years since antibiotics first started to appear on the medical scene. Before that era, above-the-elbow amputation was an operation frequently performed on patients who showed signs of spreading infection from a cut in the hand!! Nowadays some are still advocating bilateral mastectomies for those at high risk of breast cancer and to me that still seems a brutal option!
Raising the public’s level of awareness and women’s education about the disease in particular, will go a long way to help reducing the devastation that this illness can sometimes bring. The earlier we can detect cancerous lesions, the more likely that we can cure them or control them. The longer the cancer has been present, the more likely that it has spread beyond where it originally appeared, thus reducing the chances of getting good control. So early screening is the best way to go.
Currently breast screening is done by mammogram, which is still an excellent method for post-menopausal women who have less glandular tissue in their breasts. However, it appears that for pre-menopausal women with ‘denser’ breast tissue, then MRI scanning is the most accurate method currently available. Currently this is of relevance only for younger women with a strong family history of breast cancer. Cost may be an issue here, but if you weigh the investment in the life of a woman/mother against the cost of a non-invasive, safe procedure, then really there should be no argument against having it done.
