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I had to resort to getting Obamacare this year. One of the mandates is genetic counseling given certain parameters.

I fit the parameters. That said, it was a bit of a fight and had to go through appeals process.

I encourage people to get your free test if you fit the parameters..even men.

Just so you know, Ovarian Cancer in your family is a red flag. The person does not have to be under 50 to qualify as one of your necessary people.

Also, genetic testing is like the wild west. Who you use does matter.

I would say that a big part of the survival decrease for men is the belief that men don’t get breast cancer. They don’t look for it, and it is caught later. Any man who has it in his family should be vigilant.

There was a man at my last breast cancer survival group meeting. His mother also had it.

Another group with lower survival rates is young women. I’ve seen a few videos on YouTube of young women who felt something but could not get mammograms because their doctors or radiologist thought someone their age couldn’t have breast cancer. Often, the cancer has grown a lot and even metastasized before they can convince someone to give them the proper tests for diagnosis.

There is only one human genetic pattern, we all are different but the basic map is the same. The key that controls whether we develop as female or male is as everyone knows, the XX or XY chromosome.

The thing to remember is that whether we are male or female every single part exists in both sexes, albeit in vestigial form.

Thus males have undeveloped, vestigial breasts, and women have undeveloped, vestigial prostates as well as penises (don't google images of "enlarged clitoris" if you are easily shocked)

When a male gets breast cancer there is no question what it is since the male breasts are quite visible.

When a female gets prostate cancer it is always referred to as bladder cancer...any M.D. who would blurt out "you have prostate cancer" to a female is an idiot...why do that when the fact is not obvious and you can spare the poor woman needless pain.

Women having problems with their vestigial prostate tissue is thankfully quite rare and even many M.D.s are not aware that such tissue exists.

I offer the info here since freepers are a rugged lot and won't have much trouble learning of such an odd fact.

Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 90, Issue 9, 6 May 1998,

"The female homologue of the male prostate is of clinical significance not only as a focus for acute and chronic infection, but also as the origin of other pathologic entities, including adenocarcinoma (3,4), a cancer which shows, as does its male counterpart, localized expression of PSA and PSAP (3,4).

Thus, there is convincing evidence that prostatic tissue exists in the female, and that the term “female prostate” is both fully justified and preferable to the terminology Skene's glands and ducts. The latter incorrectly implies that some other structure of an extraprostatic nature, rather than the prostate itself, is involved. If the female prostate exhibits the immunopermissiveness observed in the male prostate (5), it may also serve as a site for viral latency and origin of infection in women with human immunodeficiency virus.

Of perhaps equal importance is the expression of PSA (6). The existence in women of the counterpart of the male prostate, shown to express PSA, may provide a note of caution in considering the molecular basis of the apparent anomalous expression of PSA in male and female nonprostatic tissues, e.g., in female breast (1). Given observations on the association of PSA detection in breast cancer with steroid hormonereceptor positive tumors, one may envision (6) the existence of a complex regulatory gene network controlling the expression of PSA in several organs. Therefore, a given tissue (depending on the state of cellular differentiation) may express previously repressed genes after neoplastic transformation. Also, and not mutually exclusive, somatic mutations may lead to specific changes in PSA genes in cancer cell clones (6)."

One of my neighbors and very close friends, a man, died from breast cancer about three years ago. His funeral was held one week before his oldest daughter’s wedding. It was quite an emotional time.

His case was complicated by the fact that, he first noticed a “lump” during a period of time when he was out of work. He put off going to the Dr for a few months... until he was working again, with insurance. By that time, the very aggressive cancer had metastasized. With treatment, he survived a few more years.... but, really never had much of a long term chance.

Men CAN, and DO get breast cancer. And, it’s just a deadly, if not treated early.