INFLAMMATORY Breast Cancer

It's apparently a quite rare form of cancer, and usually presents quite painfully, so don't ignore painful breasts, ladies! See your doctor to make sure it's nothing serious. A local doctor here was diagnosed about eighteen months ago and made it her mission to educate women about it. She passed away a few weeks ago in her early forties. It's frightening to think how fast your life can change. Everybody take care.

Louisa

This cancer is very rare so this rather smacks or scaremongering, commonsense will see a person through. This post goes round the net so regularly I almost feel it is specifically done to make some women fearful.

Now you can have at me but I assure you I thought long and hard before I posted this.

In watching the film clip, several of the women who had this cancer started off going to their Dr. and were told that they just had a bug bite. They were put on antibiotics and told to come back in 6 months. I'm certainly not trying to scare anyone, just make sure that ALL of us are aware of this type of cancer. Like anything else, once the symptoms got to be as bad as some of the photos, it's likely too late. I understand your concern but feel that's it's worth posting this info every now and again for those young women who are new here and might not know about Inflammatory Breast Cancer. CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Well, despite having an Internet connection and email for 8 years, I've never heard of the condition before or seen this post before, so I for one benefited by seeing the film clip.

BTW, I've also been told by a doctor that "breast cancer doesn't cause pain".

The doctor is probably one of the same ones who say that cervical biopsies don't hurt.

Elizabeth

He hasn't been my doctor for a number of years now (we moved) so I don't know how he'd handle something like that; I'd like to think that his breast cancer comment was a reflection of ignorance on his part (this event occurred more than 20 years ago), but you never know ...

Or the ever-popular claim that labor and childbirth is "just mild discomfort".

That one I've never heard.

Elizabeth

What I did hear (and possibly convinced me to NOT have children) was Bill Cosby's quote of Carol Burnett's description of childbirth:

Take your lower lip and pull it up over your forehead

Bill then goes on to describe how he dismissed this description. Until his wife was in labor with their firstborn. He was trying to persuade her out of having painkillers, and she "stood up in the stirrups, grabbed my lower lip and pulled it over my forehead". His wife got the requested painkillers :)

Nah - that he believes. My favorite from mine - this will feel like a little pinch. MY ASS a little pinch....

Neither does ovarian cancer, nor I believe cervical (judging by a friend who had it) but usually it is the owner of the breast that finds the lump.

Surely any woman worth her salt today is up on these matters ? For instance, no longer should one assume that because breast cancer is not in your family, you are pretty much immune. It is hitting far younger women than previously and very randomly. This might be because in NA we are not tough like consumers in Europe who long ago made soap companies remove an ingredient from laundry detergent that is a known carcinogen. When the Pres of P & G was asked why they didn't remove it here in NA as well, he really did not have an answer. So there are many much more pressing matters one could calmly talk about in relation to breast cancer.

Let me get this straight: you posted earlier in this thread that inflammatory breast cancer is so exceedingly rare that posting a link to a video about it is tantamount to scare-mongering, yet you say above "surely any woman worth her salt today is up on these matters?"

A lot of doctors are apparently unfamiliar with inflammatory breast cancer, *which doesn't produce lumps*, to the extent that if a female patient presents with painful breasts, she'll likely be told the pain is a result of a bug bite that will go away on its own or is the result of caffeine ingestion, or any number of other possibilities except cancer, that breast cancer does not cause pain, and are pretty much sent away without any testing or further observation.

Inflammatory breast cancer also isn't mentioned on most breast cancer sites or in the literature to which most women have access, yet we're not doing our job of self-protection if we don't know about it?!?

I did not say 'exceedingly' rare, you did, however maybe here in Canada women are more attuned to female cancers, I wouldn't know. I don't find any of my friends or people I know not being conversant with it.

Well I suppose I should not speak for your doctors, I believe that ours do a better job than telling people they have a bug bite. In fact the opposite. I thought I had a bug bite on my arm a few years back, my doctor looked and sent me to have a cyst removed.

It is on the breast cancer hand out in one of our major drug stores, I can't speak for other ones.

Whatever, the sky is falling !

Correct, you wrote "very rare", so my mistake, and I apologize for that error.

However, you appear to assume that women from countries other than Canada are necessarily less well-informed about a rare illness than are Canadian women, which I think is groundless, but experiences vary.

I'm Canadian, was born and raised and have lived my entire life here, and had never heard of inflammatory breast cancer before. So what? I was simply expressing gratitude to the OP for posting a link and am now better-informed than I was beforehand.

For some reason you chose to make an issue of it instead of simply ignoring it and moving on.

Doctors are human beings, the doctors in Canada are, collectively, neither better nor worse than those in any other country, and they're all capable of making mistakes.

I've encountered doctors all across the range of quality of care, thoroughness and professionalism; that's the way it is when dealing with fallible human beings. You're fortunate to have a doctor who apparently doesn't make mistakes.

I'll have a look to see what my local pharmacy has on offer the next time I'm in.

I never suggested it was, and I don't believe anything in the link suggested it was, or that bringing the illness to this group's attention is akin to behaving like Chicken Little. I simply expressed thanks for someone's thoughtfulness in posting the link, and the fact that some people have been enlightened should be seen as a positive, not an occasion for accusations of scare-mongering.

I wonder why the original post bothered you so much that you had to then go on to make a thinly-veiled insult to those of us who weren't familiar with this form of the disease by saying "surely any woman worth her salt today is up on these matters?"

And keeps up on the literature. There have been some absolutely horrifying statistics on what percentage of doctors "say" they read their medical journals because they know it's expected of them, and how many of them ACTUALLY read them.

I've seen it with my own disease. My specialist was one of the researchers, so he was on top of things. But someone I talked to when it was "the latest thing", her doctor saw the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the index of his journals, and assumed without reading the article that this was the new name for the chronic fatigue of anemia. Thankfully, she connected with me, and when I asked how she was handling the various other CFS symptoms, she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't have all that stuff, she was just tired. Got her off to a second opinion. She's running around thinking that she's got some dread disease when all she really needed was iron supplements to build up her blood. That's when her doctor admitted that he doesn't read his journals, just glances at the index and figures the titles of the articles will tell him everything he needs to know.

Reading journals takes time. Time away from your family and time you don't get paid for. It's easy to understand why only a small percentage of doctors actually do it. The problem is when you're one of that small percentage of patients who needs your doctor to know something he didn't learn in medical school. And, like that woman 20 years ago, when your doctor tries to sound au courant without knowing that the article didn't say what he thought it would.

No, I said Canadian women I know are very aware of cancer, symptoms etc.

And ? Did I post that you should not do so ?

As you are making an issue of my POV

Easy to tell you have lived here all your life !

Maybe he does, but not on me.

Did I say you should not ? Did I say you should not have another POV?

If you choose to take it as an insult you can, but once again you are putting words in my mouth. I don't recall using the phrase in the context that you wish to apply it.

Actually, what you said was, "... however maybe here in Canada women are more attuned to female cancers, I wouldn't know. I don't find any of my friends or people I know not being conversant with it." >

No you didn't, nor did I say that you did. My objection was that you posted in a way that suggested that posting about inflammatory breast cancer at all was effectively an effort at scare-mongering.

I took issue with your pouncing on someone's kindness and effectively accusing them of scare-mongering, and then suggesting that women who didn't know about this form of cancer were somehow lacking. No, you didn't use those exact words, but what you did write implied as much, at least to my eyes.

You had no idea where I lived until I told you, yet now you can tell I haven't lived anywhere else but Canada? Okay.

Perhaps I should have said instead, "... the doctors in Canada are, collectively, neither better nor worse than those in any other country with a similar educational system ...", but what's done is done.

You're very fortunate to have a doctor in whom you can feel such confidence; not everyone is so lucky.

No you didn't, nor did I say that you did. This whole thing started because you effectively accused the OP of scare-mongering, when all they were trying to do was inform. The fact that a number of people in this group gained information they previously lacked seems to have been beside the point from your perspective.

I wrote, "BTW, I've also been told by a doctor that "breast cancer doesn't cause pain"

To which you responded,

"Neither does ovarian cancer, nor I believe cervical (judging by a friend who had it) but usually it is the owner of the breast that finds the lump."

"Surely any woman worth her salt today is up on these matters ? For instance, no longer should one assume that because breast cancer is not in your family, you are pretty much immune. It is hitting far younger women than previously and very randomly. This might be because in NA we are not tough like consumers in Europe who long ago made soap companies remove an ingredient from laundry detergent that is a known carcinogen. When the Pres of P & G was asked why they didn't remove it here in NA as well, he really did not have an answer. So there are many much more pressing matters one could calmly talk about in relation to breast cancer."

The discussion originally was about *inflammatory breast cancer*, which is, in your words, "very rare", but doesn't produce lumps, isn't revealed by mammogram, and primarily presents as pain in the breasts, at least in the early stages. The discussion was not about the form of breast cancer whose symptoms most women are trained from an early age to know about, ie, the kind that produces identifiable breast lumps.

Never mind; this is starting to feel like a Monty Python sketch. I think it's best if I chalk it up to a misunderstanding resulting from a lack of visual and aural cues and leave it at that, since we're simply going round and round. I apologize if I misconstrued your intent.