Because male breast cancer is rare, many cases aren’t caught till later stages

By Laura Hambleton, WashPost, Published: February 25

For months, Oliver Bogler ignored the lump he felt behind the nipple of his right breast, figuring it was just a weird little nuisance. But on a rafting trip in Idaho last summer, his T-shirt was stained by discharge when he took off his life vest. That got his attention.

He went to his doctor, who immediately recommended a mammogram and biopsy. The diagnosis: breast cancer.

“I’m kicking myself I had not gone earlier,” said Bogler, 46. “I should have gone right away. [But] my major worry during this time — and I wrote this down — is looking foolish and having my wife look at me: ‘Are you kidding?’ So I didn’t say anything to anybody.”

Bogler, the senior vice president for academic affairs at MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston, is undergoing chemotherapy treatments; so far, his tumor had stopped growing. The next step in his treatment is a modified radical mastectomy, then radiation and five years of tamoxifen, which inhibits estrogen from stimulating the grown of breast cancer cells.

(More here.)