Male breast Cancer:

I've heard a statistic that each year in the USA, 10,000 men get breast cancer. I believe that implies that in my adult lifetime, I have a less than 0.5% chance of getting this awful disease.

That knowledge was a great comfort to me when I showed the lump in my breast tissue to my doctor. “Considering where it is,” he said, “You’ll have to have a mammogram and an ultrasound.”

It all happened very fast, thank goodness. I found the lump on January 12, saw my doctor on the 17th, and the procedures happened yesterday.

It’s benign.

I really thought I had little to worry about, until the ultrasound technician went out and got the radiologist. She turned on the probe again, and they quietly conversed, three feet from my ear.
“There’s one,” the tech said. “And there’s another one.”
“Please tell me,” I said. “Another what?”
“Bright spots,” the radiologist said. “They’re lipoma, fatty tissue. Let us know if it gets larger.” He told me that 5% of breast cancers happen to men. He also told me that most cases of men's breast cancer run in families. The man's mother might have had breast cancer at an early age, for example.

Well, that’s that. Next time I hear women talking about those clamps, I’ll know what they mean.