Reply #321: Funny thing is, I had a doctor who advised me AGAINST monthly BSE. [View All]

[Berry Cool]

She said the changes that happen in a tumor as it grows in your breast are so gradual that if you do a monthly BSE, you probably won't even notice them.

I was flabbergasted. First time a DOCTOR ever failed to castigate me for not doing one regularly. Then I read in Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book that she too advises against monthly BSEs as doing little good.

And to think there was so much campaigning done aimed at us women telling us a monthly BSE and a mammogram would save our lives. They even used to use little strings of beads to demonstrate: With a monthly BSE you might detect a tumor this tiny but with an annual one it might be THIS big before you see it on a mammogram. (Implying, of course, that with a big tumor you'd be dead and with a little one you'd live.)