The American Cancer Society estimates 235,030 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. Of those, 2,360 will be men.
Of the estimated 40,430 people who will die from breast cancer in 2014, about 430 will be men.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Find more stories of courage, treatment and survival in the face of breast cancer at www.columbian.com/news/health/breast-cancer
Dean Black has been healthy his whole life.
He rarely gets sick. He avoids unnecessary medications. He stays active.
But none of that mattered when the 56-year-old Vancouver man was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year.
The American Cancer Society estimates 235,030 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. Of those, 2,360 will be men.
Of the estimated 40,430 people who will die from breast cancer in 2014, about 430 will be men.
The diagnosis — one only an estimated 2,360 men are expected to hear in 2014 — left Black feeling a mixture of emotions: surprise, concern, uncertainty, denial.
Then, gratitude.
“It ended up being one of the coolest things I’ve gone through,” Black said. “You come face to face with your mortality, it puts things in perspective.”
“It let me experience God in a way I never had,” he added. “In that respect, it was the best thing ever.”
Years of uncertainty
Black first noticed something unusual with his breast back in 2002. One day, he noticed a drop or two of blood on his shirt. The blood had come from the nipple on his right breast. A few days later, it happened again.
The bleeding was minimal — only a couple of drops at a time — and intermittent, so Black didn’t pay it much attention. But, eventually, he made an appointment with his physician and was referred to a surgeon.
By the time Black got in to see the surgeon, the bleeding hadn’t occurred for weeks. The surgeon sent Black to get a mammogram, but it didn’t reveal anything irregular. The surgeon told Black to come back if the bleeding started again.
In the years that followed, Black would occasionally find a couple of drops of blood or clear discharge on his shirts, but it never lasted long enough to prompt Black to make another appointment.
In the fall of 2012, though, the bleeding and discharge had been occurring intermittently for about a month. Black went back to the doctor and received another mammogram and a breast ultrasound.
The mammogram revealed a small amount of calcification beneath Black’s nipple. The calcification wasn’t an indicator of breast cancer, but it could be present with cancer, the surgeon told Black. But it was such a small amount, that the surgeon decided only to monitor the area and directed Black to return in six months for another mammogram.
At the time, Black didn’t give much thought to the finding.
“OK, it’s not cancer,” he said. “We’re chasing a ghost here.”
In May 2013, Black returned for another mammogram. Nothing had changed.
“The suspicion level was a little higher,” at that point, Black said. “But I was happy to ignore it because my mom died that same month from breast cancer.”
That October, while on vacation, Black woke up one morning and found several drops of blood on his chest — more than any other bleeding episode. The bleeding became more regular — about once a week through the month of November. Then it stopped.
In February, Black was visiting his father in Montana when he suddenly felt a strange sensation in his right breast. It felt as though someone was poking him. The pain lasted for several hours.
“It definitely caught my attention,” Black said.
Two weeks later, Black felt as though pressure was building in his breast. He called and made an appointment with the surgeon. The next morning, Black woke to find more bloody discharge.
At his appointment, Black received another mammogram and breast ultrasound. The images showed nothing.
An MRI, however, revealed a 5- to 6-millimeter tumor.
Breast cancer diagnosis
A pathologist analyzing the tumor biopsy suspected hyperplasia (an increase in normal cells) but thought there was likely also ductal carcinoma in situ, a type of noninvasive breast cancer.
The pathologist and surgeon agreed the tumor needed to be removed.
Black assumed the procedure would be minimally invasive — a small incision to remove the tiny tumor. He later learned he would need a mastectomy to remove all of the tissue in his right breast. The surgeon also planned to removed a couple lymph nodes.
“That was a little bit of a surprise after 12 years of thinking it can’t be cancer,” Black said.
Black went into surgery on April 29 thinking the procedure was overkill. The surgeon was performing a major removal of breast tissue for noninvasive cancer.
A few days later, Black learned the mass of noninvasive cancer was larger than doctors thought, about 11 millimeters. More surprisingly, the pathologist found a 1- to 2-millimeter tumor of invasive cancer nearby.
“I went from feeling like this was a complete overkill to thinking how the timing on this was amazingly perfect,” Black said.
Tests on Black’s lymph nodes came back clear. While Black didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation, he will go in for annual mammograms of his left breast.
In God’s care
The cancer diagnosis was the focus of Black’s life for some time. Eventually, though, the focus shifted.
“A funny thing happened along the way,” he said. “A different, unexpected thread emerged that came to be the most valuable thing happening: God used the circumstances of cancer to show himself to me in ways much deeper than I’d ever experienced before.”
Throughout the diagnosis, surgery and recovery, Black had people from church praying for him and his wife, Linda. The prayers, Black said, put him at peace. The whole situation made Black realize he was in God’s care, he said.
“Experiencing God care for and carry me in this way wound up being the thing that far overshadowed the cancer itself,” Black said. “It was a priceless, amazing time. … I honestly wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
