Hi
I’m interested in this post as I am also a lobular lady, and hadn’t come accross much about it. To be honest I’d never heard about it before I got it. Does anyone have any useful websites or articles I could read, as ‘google’ doesn’t have very much.
As for risk factors and protective factors; well I fully breast fed three children; lot of good it did me!
Also, my lobular cancer didn’t show up on mammogram last year, but I had two tumours and needed a mastectomy. Now they say that they will do annual mammograms on the other breast, but I have no confidence in this. Any advice?
x
When i was in hospital my surgeon said a god way to feel one is by holding the skin either side rather than just feeling (hope that makes sense). He said sometimes you couldn’t feel anything by just feeling the area but if you have it between 2 fingers you could feel something there, more of a thickening.
I had a radical mastectomy and then opted for a prophylactic mastectomy on the other breast. However in discussions beforehand when we were talking about how they would keep a check on the non-cancerous breast they said that they would not do mammograms but rather two-yearly MRIs with contrast. I did actually have this done prior to all my surgery.
I would ask again about this and about MRIs. They are considerably more expensive but if you can afford it you may decide to have this done privately for peace of mind.
although there may be an increased chance of getting BC if you drink alchol this will be for women who drank before diagnosis… its not research on whether you would get a subsequent cancer, a recurrence or secondaries if you drink alcohol.
the single main cause of getting breast cancer is being female… 46000 women a year are diagnosed compared to 300 men… thats over 150 times more chance if your female.
the second main cause is getting older… 20% of breast cancer under age 50, 80% occur after age 50… unfortunately these two risk factors we can do nothing about.
you can cut down alcohol, reduce your weight, eat a health diet and they may make you feel better but in the grand scheme of things they probably wont really have too much of an effect on your risk of future cancers.
in addition lobular cancer isnt so common and we dont know what kind of cancer we may develop until we get it… so if you never drank yes you may have reduced your risk slightly of getting lobular cancer but you would still be more likely to devlop ductal cancer in the first place.
some people feel they need to be doing something proactive to help reduce the risk of breast cancer so if your happy to live without alcohol/dairy products/chocolate etc and that makes you feel better then i say its all good however if you want to continue with your current lifestyle wine and all enjoy it… we only get one chance at life and there is no point being miserable.
im much more of a supporter of quality over quantity… id rather live my life fully even if it means i wont live to see old age than stop doing things i love just to gain a few more months or years feeling miserable.
be good to yourselves and do what feels right for you xxxx
I was told they would compare previous mammograms with the current one. Therefore, it would be easier to detect lobular bc the next time, as they are looking for any changes. If they find any, then they investigate further.
Lulu - I agree with your sentence: “so if you never drank yes you may have reduced your risk slightly of getting lobular cancer but you would still be more likely to develop ductal cancer in the first place.” I said something similar in one of my earlier posts: “Although the research says that alcohol doubles the risk of ILC, it is also showing that the risk of IDC is higher in both drinkers (double) and non-drinkers (three times) than of ILC.”
Thanks for your posting - I fully agree with every word.
I am a lobular lady too, now with secondaries, and I can look back and identify factors that both increased and decreased my risk, but the bottom line is that I am one of the unlucky ones who did develop lobular cancer. I don’t blame myself for the factors which increased my risk -including being female! - and I don’t begrudge the lucky people with higher risk than me who still go on to avoid cancer.