the testimony of Francis, operated on for breast cancer

Men represent less than 1% of breast cancer cases. A rare pathology with often late diagnosis. This is what happened to Francis, 75 years old. Operated in 2013 after three years of medical wandering, he gives us his testimony.

It’s so rare, breast cancer in men, that even doctors don’t always think about it.

For three years, Francis would regularly show a lump near the nipple, without any general practitioner or specialist really worrying.

We talk to him about a fatty cyst. Except that the day he decides to remove it is another story.

“I will always remember itrelates the septuagenarian. I come out of surgery, the doctor comes in for a visit and there he sits on the bed. I said to myself: “this is not good”. And that’s when he told me it was cancer.”

And more specifically, breast cancer. “I didn’t even think about that, despite the fact that they dragged me around for three years… For me it was a cyst, it had to be removed. So when I was told that, I I was really too surprised, I didn’t understand.”

Cases like that of Francis, Jean-François Berdah, head of the oncology department at Castelluccio hospital, who arrived three years ago, has seen 3 pass, when nearly 120 women are operated on here each year for cancer of the breast.

1% is the incidence of this pathology in men. If a lump is more easily detected on a male torso, the diagnosis is later.

“Proportionally, we find relatively few very small breast cancers in men, whereas they are diagnosed in women, sometimes with millimeters, but because they have mammograms, because they are sensitized, because that they are being screened, because they have had someone in their family or those close to themexplains the specialist. So we find tumors in women that are 7 to 8 millimeters in size, even though we need to do an examination for that, and we find tumors in men that are two centimeters in size, whereas sometimes a hand is enough. “

Awareness is therefore important.

This year, for Pink October – an annual global campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer screening – Francis agreed to pose among women. A way of telling men that the disease can affect them too.

If we touch a woman’s privacy when we remove her breast, Francis confides “not having any problems with your physique”. He also refused breast reconstruction.

His treatment now dates back eleven years. And he believes he has “got lucky” because despite the three years lost, his cancer was caught in time.

The report by Céline Lerouxel and Franck Rombaldi: