October is dedicated to breast cancer awareness and as the month winds down, NBC 5 wanted to spotlight something that sometimes slips through the cracks – men with breast cancer.
While breast cancer in men is rare, it can be more aggressive and deadly.
“Male breast cancer is 60 times more aggressive in men than it is in females. And there's only going to be about 3,000 men diagnosed with it in the United States,” breast cancer survivor Galen Johnson said. “A third of us are going to die in the first year. And for me to be sitting here four years later, according to my last CT scan, there's no sign of cancer in my body right now.”
Johnson, a photographer in McKinney, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020.
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“I felt a bump, and I thought it was an abscess because I've had them before,” Johnson said. “And one morning, I woke up, and I couldn't catch my breath. So, I went to the ER, and they did a scan on me and said I had a mass on my chest pressing down on my lung.”
Johnson’s cancer was stage three when diagnosed and then it traveled to his liver and became stage four.
He went through a double mastectomy and around 30 rounds of chemo and radiation treatment.
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He’s now dedicated to encouraging other men to pay attention to their bodies and not think breast cancer can only affect women.
Johnson said it’s a journey that has changed his outlook on life.
“I look at it as a journey because right now my life, mentally, socially, and physically, and spiritually, is better than it was before I was diagnosed with cancer,” Johnson said. “It's kind of strange to say this because I'm glad I got cancer because my life is better. I have a life that I love.”
You can find more information about men and breast cancer by visiting: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer-in-men.html
