Topic: Anyone else in this category?

My, scary that you may be correct in your observation between your adolescent rads and current state, Annie. I saw your post yesterday, and connected a dot. Can't believe your doctor back then proceeded past lumpectomy with radiation (although they used it for acne, so clearly miscalculated). Do you think you had a low grade phyloides tumor, by any chance?

Nevertheless, it still bites. It would serve to stroke me anew with frustration for the disease and the adolescent treatment selected.

I do know one Hodgkin's survivor with breast cancer who received high dose radiation too.

Tender

Annie,  I think you need to watch your thyroid because of the exposure also.  My dad was about 10 when 3 of his siblings had TB.  He had x-rays every 6 months for years.  He never had TB, but he got thyroid cancer which metastasized to his lungs.  Thyroid c is strongly linked to radiation exposure.  It's one of the easiest cancers to cure if it's caught early.

I think my bc was from working with paint thinners and benzene products.  To clean up after oil painting we would wash our brushes and hands in toxic chemicals, and as a graphic designer I would clean my desk and art with benzene.  I wonder how many artists have bc?

sally 

Anne, this brings up a question that I have had since my dx. From the time I was 8 until 12 (1969-1973) I was being treated for spine scolosis, and had numerable x-rays to check the progress of my scolosis and if the surgery I had at age 11 helped stablize my crooked spine. No one can give me a straight answer if that radiation I received those years could have effected my body and caused the abnormal mammo/biopsies I had prior to my bilat mast last June.

It is something to think about.

Sheila

Sally, I have often thought there was a direct connection between my bezene use and my bc. As a graphic designer from way before we used computers, there was bezene in the rubber cement and thinner we used for paste-ups. Shoot, I used to squirt the thinner onto my hands to clean them of the residual stickiness. Did you have any chemo?  Because now my worry is that I will develop another cancer down the road due to the bezene exposure and the Cytoxan I have been taking. There's a definite correlation there that's in the side effects literature.

Annie, I don't have triple neg bc, and I also did not get many xrays growing up (except dental checks), but I think there are some definite environmental connections that will need to be explored more. I'm sure many of them have been mapped already and are just waiting for the right eye to put them together. 

This is an interesting thread, with many truths in it.  But it pays to remember that they have found breast cancer residue in Egyptian mummies.  So who really knows?

Hugs to you all, Shirlann

Annie, you snuck off to Africa without telling us???  (Well, you probably know what we would have said.  Did anyone accompany you, to help you pack?)

I know what you mean about being totally convinced of the cause of your BC, if for no other reason than the fact that it allows you to worry less about the other side.  Every time I read a new report about what causes--or prevents--BC, I cringe.  It seems another report comes out every few days, and it's too late for me to do anything about most of them. The latest is that stuff out of Portland, Oregon, claiming that women who develop BC while taking HRT are less likely to die of their cancer than women who develop BC but never took HRT.  Great.  So I adopt one truly helpful preventive measure (not taking HRT), and develop BC anyway; and now I find out I might have been better off on HRT???  There must be more to that story...

Anyway, pack carefully, fly safely, and we'll see you on the other side.  I hope you come back soon, although this must be a nice respite for you.

Hugs, 

otter 

Oh Annie, how did I miss you were a Medullarian?  ME TOO!!!  They thought I had Lymphoma.  Idiots.

It is fun we are both Medullary and both Triple Negs.  We are truly, truly sisters.

Hugs, Shirlann