BREAST CANCER: What To Hope, How To Cope.
BREAST CANCER: What To Hope, How To Cope. Rita had none of the classic risk factors. She was 40 years old, healthy, and had no family history of breast cancer. Her regular mammogram had shown nothing abnormal. But one day while examining her breast in the shower, she felt a lump. It turned out to be cancer. Rita and her husband sat numbly while the doctor explained her options. In times past, a doctor would tell a woman with breast cancer that her only hope lay in a radical mastectomy –a disfiguring operation that removed the breast, lymph nodes in the chest and armpit, and chest muscles. Chemotherapy or radiation treatments often prolonged the ordeal. Understandably, many dreaded the ‘cure’ more than the disease. The battle against breast cancer has been an going struggle between the need to treat a killer aggressively and the desire to avoid needless disfigurement and painful side effects. Like Rita, today’s breast cancer patients may