HWN Suggests

The Wrong Approach to Breast Cancer

After a decades-long trend toward less invasive surgery, patients’ interest in removing the unaffected breast through a procedure called contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (or C.P.M., as it’s known in the trade) is skyrocketing, and not just among women like me who have been through treatment before...

Many of those same young women underestimated the potential complications and side effects of C.P.M. Breasts don’t just screw off, like jar lids: Infections can occur, implants can break through the skin or rupture, tissue relocated from elsewhere in the body can fail. Even if all goes well, a reconstructed breast has little sensation. Mine looks swell, and is a remarkably close…

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Articles of Interest

Angelina Jolie - Beauty Redefined

The whole world is once again talking about Angelina Jolie and not because she's adopted another baby, donated money to another charity, built another school, or has finally married her partner, Brad Pitt

Defying Doctors, More Women With Breast Cancer Choose Double Mastectomies

A mounting body of medical literature is arguing against such drastic surgery. The procedure virtually eliminates the already-tiny chance that cancer will develop in the remaining breast. But it carries its own significant risks of complications such as infections. Meanwhile, doctors say, returning cancer is much more likely to spread or metastasize elsewhere in the body, such as bones, the liver or the brain.

Double mastectomy: my brutal 40-day breast cancer cure

A handful of atypical cells one week; a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery...

I Didn’t Need a Double Mastectomy to Save My Life. Here’s Why I Did It Anyway.

Once survival odds and quality-of-life issues are discussed, and it’s time for a woman to make her final decision—to remove one breast or two, to have a lumpectomy or mastectomy, to reconstruct or not, silicone or saline—we would step back and honor her choice. And why not? She’s the only one who is, we hope, going to live with it.

No Regrets After Double Mastectomy, but Questions Remain

But there are things Ms. Foldes, a 58-year-old accountant from Woodmere, N.Y., wishes she had known when she chose a double mastectomy, like the fact that the process of reconstruction would drag on for five months and leave her forever unable to sleep on her stomach. Or that it would leave her with no sensation “from the front all the way to the back in the entire bra area,” she said. “Nothing. Zero. Zip.”

Why I’m Not Having a Preventive Mastectomy

My genetics suggest a high risk of cancer, like Angelina Jolie. But I’m not convinced that preventive surgery is a good idea.

Resources

Ticking Time Bombs

What would you do if you knew you were going to get cancer?