Do you know about Prophylactic Mastectomy ?
It refers to the action of taking your breast tissue away even though you have no breast cancer. But you already diagnosed to have the risk.
When you do it to both of your breasts, it’s called Double Mastectomy.
Most of medical journals has been talking it in a way that make it sounds like it’s a mutilation process (radical, extreme, etc.), though it’s not. They just don’t know how to talk properly with women. Women should know that it’s a best decision for women who has large risks of breast cancer, whom family (including your aunts or even your grandparents) has a history of breast cancer. We have a great plastic surgery, and there are good doctors who are highly skilled and able to leave only a minim of surgery’s scars.
Of course there are risks, since it’s a big operation. It takes around 5 hours, and you must be mentally prepared. However, it’s your breasts to be taken, not just some portion of meat. Still, you have to seriously consider it, talk intensely about the options with your trusted doctor.
Ask yourself : Do you still want to be around your family? Around your husband? Around your children? And have a very nice sleep, instead of having mammography and biopsy tests then nervously waiting for the results …. over and over again?
Below is a statistic of women intention to do the mastectomy (from http://www.nature.com):
You can see from the stat that women who hesitate and who are sure of not doing the mastectomy are the major ones. It certainly shows the contradiction. Yet, let’s give a big applause for those who have decided to have the mastectomy. I believe they did it mostly for the sake of their beloved ones. *My biggest respect to my boyfriend’s mother who has successfully had the operation done*
It’s Genetic, So Pay Attention
Pay more attention if you have family members around 40 to 45 years old
that already have/had breast cancer or ovarium cancer. Bottom point is “having young family member who has/had neither breast or ovarium cancer”, making your risk of the cancer even greater.
5 – 10 % of breast cancer are genetically inherited. If you are an Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jewish, you have 2,5 % risk of breast cancer. And if your father or a male family member has/had breast cancer, which is very rarely happened, your risk of breast cancer is up until 40%. But by doing the mastectomy, your risk will drastically down until 2%.
If you recognized one of those previous conditions mentioned above, you should ask for ” Genetic Counseling for Breast Cancer ” to your doctor. They will guide you to a consultant that’ll help you going through your family trees, and if they think it’s necessary, you will be asked to do the Genetic Tests. The tests are usually called as “BRCA1” and “BRCA2” (read: braca one, braca two).
Dr. Marie Savard, the expert doctor invited to the Oprah Show, said that BRCA1 and BRCA2 are also related to the Ovarium Cancer, since the ovarium and breast cancer are related. 80 – 85% of women have risk of breast cancer and 50% risk of ovarium cancer. If you take your ovarium lifted, it’ll decrease 50% of your risk of breast cancer on BRCA1 and BRCA2. But it doesn’t mean that your ovarium cancer (if you have one) is completely gone.
When you talk about cancers, there’ll be lots of controversies emerge. In the end, it’s important to know more information about it and you are the one to decide what’s the best thing to do for yourself.
To know more about the prophylactic mastectomy and its procedure, go to :
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