Women With Pre-Cancer Tumors Urged to Reconsider Surgery

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-02/women-with-pre-cancer-tumors-urged-to-reconsider-surgery.html

Jackie Fox and Peggy MacDonald share a diagnosis. Both were told by doctors they had a cluster of abnormal cells in one of their breasts that may turn into cancer. Each reacted in vastly different ways to their bad news.

Fox, 57, who received her diagnosis five years ago, decided to have her breast surgically removed. MacDonald, 49, got her news in March. She opted against surgery. Their decisions were highly personal, driven by unique circumstances and long-held feelings about cancer, the women said in separate interviews. Both women believe they made the right decision.

Some people can bash a woman’s choices,” Fox said. “They can tell you it isn’t likely that anything is going to happen, but they can’t tell you you’re not going to live in fear.”

That wasn’t MacDonald’s issue. After her diagnosis for the same condition, ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, McDonald felt as if her doctors put her on a “cancer conveyor belt” that moved too quickly: a mammogram, a biopsy, and then a breast surgeon discussing the intricacies of surgery.

[hedgehog]

1. My mother had the masectomy she'd feared for 60 years

when she was 80. I'll never know, because I don't want to ask my Dad about her diagnosis, but I have a suspicion this surgery was not needed and that it shortened her life.

[Warpy]

2. Same thing with my own mother

in her early 70s. She refused chemo and radiation and lived to 94.

She probably could have kept her breast and lived to the same ripe old age.