The Cancer Is Not My Fault aka My Rant

PreludeSing · June 2018

WC3...inspired post! I loved it, loved it, loved it.😂.

My good friend told me this afternoon that I should write a book called "How to Eat Right, Live Right, Sleep Right, Exercise Right, Have Kids Right, Breast Feed Right, Find Work Life Balance and STILL get Breast Cancer" (she was kidding around of course)...

I was like...yeah...that would be a very short book for such a verbose title since the sum total of all research in this area can be summarized thus:

Hello there. I'm a person with breasts. Sometimes they get cancer. My breast got cancer. I got treated. Now I'm with Monsieur NED. Hope he doesn't leave me for another woman. The End. For Now. I Hope. I Pray. Pretty Please with a Cherry On Top.

🙏💐

pupmom · June 2018

DATNY, after my diagnosis my Vit D levels were tested and found to be normal. Just saying.

PreludeSing · June 2018

my Vitamin D levels were normal at diagnosis too..

pupmom · June 2018

Great Rant WC3! I have a family history, grandmother and sister. Had been vegetarian, not entirely vegan, for about 15 years before dx (still am). I do not buy into the lifestyle blame game, with a few notable exceptions. Oh, and my DH and I have had two friends die of lung cancer who never smoked.

ksusan · June 2018

Prelude, I'd read it!

Shellsatthebeach · June 2018

My aunt is a food fundamentalist. I will never forget being a teen and ordering a salad with her. The salad had a piece of pita next to it. She promptly told me to remove it for her as some how she was afraid the carbs would absorb in her skin if she touched it and make her sugar go up. She then preceded to dump half the salad in the trash because a couple of pieces of lettuce had touched the pita and contaminated it. Now understandable if you suffer a food allergy or celiac disease, but she has neither. She is just very fearful of all sorts of food (and a host of other things). Good news is she never got cancer. Now just maybe her lifestyle has kept all things at bay. To be perfectfully honest, life is wayyyy to short to stress all day over food and the many other things she obsesses about....I'd rather live a shorter life span with high quality than to be 100 and a worry wart. Just my 2 cents. Also, if having a delicious piece of strawberry shortcake with my neighbor puts me on the naughty list, so be it.

WC3 · June 2018

Shellsatthebeach:

That's OCD :-) People with certain types of OCD just can't get over the strong sense of contamination their brain generates.

Warrior2018 · June 2018

WC3- did you have genetic testing done?

WC3 · June 2018

I had some genetic testing done. It did not turn up a mutation but there are five women in my family who have had breast cancer, two on my father's side. My grandmother and I having it at the same age in our 30s, so it's familial and there is very likely a gene that I just wasn't tested for or has not been discovered yet or an inherited epigenetic trait. Or maybe the test yielded a false negative. Curiously, my sister, who had DCIS in her early 40s turned up with a BRCA1 mutation of unknown significance.

Karz72 · June 2018

I'm so with you WC3! I was fit & healthy when diagnosed with mets off the bat at 42. Watched everything I ate for two years & NED still left me... Now I have liver mets I watch my diet to deal with a sensitive stomach and try my best to get some exercise in.

It's hard enough living with this disease without having to deal with ignorance and insensitivity. My worst is "I saw this article on Facebook..."

edwards750 · June 2018

Everything in moderation.

Diane

Meow13 · June 2018

WC3, I don't know anyone related to me going back 4 generations that had cancer except my grandfather had colon cancer, but he was in ww1 in the trenches and worked with chemicals in a tannery died at 73. Most of my relatives lived into their 90s. I was and am in good health. I didn't have genetic testing my insurance wouldn't cover it. There only a handful of known breast cancer related genes. You are right there could be others.

ShetlandPony · June 2018

Recently there is good evidence that two hitherto unsuspected genes increase breast cancer risk and should be added to the list of genes to check in bc patients from cancer-prone families: MSH6 and PMS2. The evidence has only come to light recently, and since these have not been considered "breast cancer genes" in the past, bc patients may not get tested for them. They are Lynch Syndrome genes, associated particularly with colon and endometrial cancer, but also with others such as stomach, pancreas, kidney/ureter, hepatobiliary, prostate, ovarian, brain, and skin. I'm sure other genes will eventually come to light.

WC3 · June 2018

ShetlandPony:

Yeah, I was thinking about that. I'm wondering if there are genes that result in traits that don't cause breast cancer by themselves but combined with other genes, significantly increase the chances. For example maybe a gene that causes dense breasts combined with a gene that increases that transport of growth factor receptors to the cell membrane. Things that don't cause cancer on their own but set the stage such that normal tumor suppressing mechanisms can't compensate and the odds of cancer developing exceed 50%.

WC3 · June 2018

Meow13:

There's a lot of cancer in my family so I wasn't particularly shocked to get it but I hadn't known my grandmother got it the first time in her 30s until after I was diagnosed. I was thinking if I got cancer it would be sometime after 40. It didn't stop me requesting a mammogram when I first found a new lump though. I've always tried to be pre emptive and proactive with my health which is why I'm particularly pissed off it was misdiagnosed the first time. Paradoxically, people in my family also live a long time if they survive the cancer.

ShetlandPony · July 2018

WC3, I agree that it could be that multiple gene mutations create the "perfect storm" for some people. Genetically caused dense breasts, high hormone levels, germline genetic mutation, environmental trigger -- Bam! It's not all under our control.

(Just to clarify the info about the mismatch repair genes MSH6 and PMS2, I did not meant that those two Lynch genes tend to occur together. A person with Lynch syndrome has a deleterious mutation in one of the four or five Lynch genes. Either of the two I named can predispose a person to breast cancer.)

Something to keep in mind is that you can have the genetic testing company re-run your results periodically to see if more has been learned about any variants of unknown significance, or genes that have new research. Also, the quality i.e. depth and breadth of the testing matters. For example, the popular home genetic test companies only cover some BRCA mutations, while the more sophisticated tests the doctor orders cover more. And I don't know why in this day and age many young women get only BRCA testing, when we know there are so many other genes out there that matter to both breast cancer and other cancers. Sometimes genetic testing results help inform treatment decisions, and give family members ways to be proactive with personalized screening and/or prophylactic surgery for various cancers.

MtKushmore · October 2018

Same here, so I feel ya! Eat well, buy most of our produce from the local farmers' market, cook at home, no processed foods, don't smoke, exercise regularly, mostly lean proteins, etc., etc. No family history, genetic test came back with no mutations. Diagnosed at 33.

Same story with my friend, for whom this happened a couple years ago (she's doing great now). We both have PhDs in biochemistry, so we've pored through all the papers, read all the studies... sometimes at the end of the day, there's no "why." Or at least, we don't have answers right now. It's infuriating.

When she was diagnosed, she had her biopsy sent to an academic lab that was doing a study on bovine leukemia virus-- and her cancer cells tested positive for it. What's that about? We don't know yet. Where did it come from? Who knows. Did it help cause it? Who knows.

More and more young women are getting diagnosed every year. Some of that is because we're more vigilant about early detection, and technology means we can get more accurate diagnoses. But that doesn't account for all of the increases. Maybe it's whatever pesticides were in the food we ate growing up. Maybe it's whatever environmental pollutants were in the air, or our reliance on plastic. Maybe it's the hormones in the milk we drank. Unfortunately, we may not know for decades.

At the end of the day, it sucks. It'll be even more maddening if it turns out to be factors beyond our control, like pesticides or chemicals or industrial this and that.

The upside is that cancer therapy is better now than it was a year ago, than it was five years ago, than it was ten years ago. And it'll keep getting better. My Her2+ cancer is more treatable now than it would've been 10 years ago. So........ yeah, it all sucks. But hopefully we'll all make it through, and 30, 40 years from now, we'll read studies about how This, That, and the Other in the 80s dicked over a whole generation of women, and we'll be able shake our canes angrily at the sky and say, "Screwwwww youuuuuuuu! You didn't kill me, bastards!!!" and then go back to our crotcheting and pottery collections.

Meow13 · October 2018

I was in the best health of my life when I was diagnosed with cancer.

jo6359 · October 2018

it's nice to have a healthy debate. Yes I am one of those vegetarian gurus. Nonsmoker minimal drinking exercise daily vegetarian healthy and spiritual. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I did not blame anything or any person. No family history either. I do believe toxins in the environment have a lot to do with what's happening in our lives today. Our environment today is far different from how our grandparents and great-grandparents lived. Not just breast cancer either; all cancers.I will continue to live the same healthy lifestyle I lived prior to breast cancer. I do it because it makes me feel better and I also believe it helps me to recuperate from chemo and all the other fun stuff that comes along with it. It's the only lifestyle I know. You want to hear something really funny. I don't even like sweets. The smell of chocolate makes me sick. When I pig out it's a big bowl of blueberries. LOL through this journey I have met many women with breast cancer. Some are overweight, some are smokers and some are heavy drinkers and some are like Moth and myself health nuts( joking)but do you know what I don't judge any of them. Stuff happens. Cancer sucks. I guess the lesson here is don't judge others be kind

Outfield · October 2018

WIth you, WC3. I'm 8 years out so I don't hear that crap as much anymore, but I think Shetland nailed the reason for it. It's all about the stories people tell themselves about why THEY won't get cancer.

PurpleCat · October 2018

Glad to have found this thread. I've been struggling with this lately. I've eaten fairly healthy most of the time for most of my life, but have slacked off lately, and really slacked off with exercise. I've been beating myself up about how if I'd done better with this I wouldn't have gotten cancer. Thanks for your rant; clearly if someone as healthy as you can get cancer, then it just happens. I needed to hear that.

jo6359 · October 2018

Purplecat- do not beat yourself up over your diagnosis. Cancer is not your fault.

Egads007 · October 2018

I wasn't health conscious when I was diagnosed. Ate lousy things, never exercised etc...When I presented that fact to my MO she replied “the highest risk factors are advancing age, sex and family history, all out of your control"

Looking for 'fault' is as productive as trying to find a unicorn. There are none. Same goes for fault.

ShetlandPony · October 2018

Sex is a risk factor?! Darn, I knew DH and I were having too much fun. Oh well, no problem now, if you know what I mean.

Meow13 · October 2018

shetland, you got me laughing.

Egads007 · October 2018

LOL!!! Well hell, why did I get cancer?!?!?

Sincerely, Lana Lackanooki

AliceBastable · October 2018

I know why I got breast cancer, plus three other types: I'm a shit magnet.

mLghtn · October 2018

I was always very fit, healthy lifestyle, whole foods balanced diet, nobody in my family has ever had cancer at a young age like me. My 75 yr old parents (with no health problems) reaction to my dx was like how can You have cancer?! I would think there are so many people that appear to be so unhealthy compared to myself, why did I get this? Then I blamed myself for possibly too much dairy intake affecting hormone levels, or just having a high stress personality, or both. Now I really believe its a crap shoot, just bad luck. Here is a study showing cancers are random occurrences and will occur no matter how perfect the environment.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/release...

WC3 · October 2018

mLghtn:

Sometimes I do wonder about dairy. I do like cheese. I have limited my dairy post dx because my cancer is triple positive and dairy does contain things that can proliferate it. But as far as causing the cancer, it's difficult for me to implicate environmental factors like a snack of string cheese a few times per week or a half serving of low fat cottage cheese instead of meat for dinner because my family history is so strong in comparison, my grandmother was lactose intolerant, and I think I might actually have consumed less dairy than average as an adult.

I drank non fat milk as a child but wasn't a regular milk consumer as an adult. It has actually been over 10 years since I have had a dairy product for breakfast and I consumed hardly any dairy for a number of years as a young adult.

chocomousse · July 2019

I agree WC3. My lifestyle was similar to yours. I was a vegetarian for almost 20 years when I was diagnosed. I ate lots of green leafy and root vegetables, drank bluberry/kale/spinach, etc., smoothies regularly, had never weighed over 100lbs, never drank, smoked, used drugs or hormonal birth control and was never a fan of milk yet, I was diagnosed with BC. I read a report that said that the rate of BC among vegetarians is actually slightly higher than among meat eaters. My guess is this is because people who regularly consume fresh produce are exposure to more pesticides, even when it's labelled organic. Although there is a strong link between an unhealthy lifestyle and certain types of cancer, a healthy lifestyle may reduce the risk of cancer but it certainly won't prevent it. I'm leaning towards the school of thought that believes cancer is caused by an infectious agent. It's no surprise that BC was practically unheard of in Japan until they adopted a dairy heavy, Western diet and now their BC rates are almost identical to ours. We're definitely being exposed to harmful microbes in our meat and dairy that some of us are simply more susceptible to either due to genetics or an immune system weakened by external factors like environmental toxins.

The Cancer Is Not My Fault aka My Rant

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