Cape Town - When Cameron February started to leak small drops of fluid from his left nipple five years ago, he never gave it too much thought.
“I lived a very healthy and active lifestyle so I never thought something could go wrong. I continued with my life until I started feeling a lump under my nipple two years down the line,” he recalled.
After noticing the grain-sized lump, the 54-year-old father of one, from Athlone, Cape Town, decided to visit a doctor.
After a biopsy, he was told he had “nothing to worry about as the lump was benign”.
“But the doctor recommended that I have it removed anyway. It was after an attempt to remove it that he told me that I had breast cancer around the nipple.
“I couldn’t believe my ears. I was a man… I wasn’t supposed to have breast cancer. For me breast cancer was a women’s thing,” he said.
February is one of the breast cancer survivors who shared their stories about breast cancer at Mitchells Plain Hospital on Monday.
The event, hosted by the Pink Drive Mobile Breast Clinic and attended by cancer survivors and their families, was officiated by Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo.
Speaking to the Cape Argus after attending the event, February said as a man he had to “swallow his pride and attend treatment sessions with women”.
After having a mastectomy at Groote Schuur Hospital, February had to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy – treatments that left him sick with nausea, mouth sores and hair loss.
“Going through treatment was probably the toughest part, but fortunately I had a lot of support from friends and family. This is always very important as cancer is a scary condition,” he said.
He had to change his lifestyle such as his diet, but also had to adjust his thinking in order to converse with women about a disease that mostly affected them.
“I remember that I used to be the only man among women. Some of them were very shocked that a man could also have breast cancer.
But the experience also taught me how understanding women were. They didn’t care that I was a man… they were just very supportive,” February said.
Mbombo said the incidence of breast cancer continued to increase, and was one of the most common cancers among women.
Global statistics showed that one in eight women had breast cancer. In the Western Cape the statistic was one in 12. However, Groote Schuur Hospital diagnosed between 10 and 20 new breast cancer cases each week.
Helen Ohlhoff, regional co-ordinator of Look Good Feel Better, an NGO that holds workshops for cancer patients, said side-effects of chemotherapy included dehydrated, dry and itchy skin.
Cape Argus