It definitely does take two to tango, but when it comes to being the person who made you possible the bulk of that appreciation must go to Mom. She’s the one who brought you into the world, and that’s obviously a part of why all of us hold our mothers in the highest regard. You’ll want to have both your parents in your life for as long as possible and having them live to a ripe old age is what everyone will want. A cancer diagnosis puts all of that in immediate jeopardy, and for women breast cancer is one of the biggest risks they face. Early detection is extremely helpful, so what does breast cancer look like?
Breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer for women and is characterized by lumps in the breast tissue. Those lumps are caused by cancer cells that are growing in glands or lobules inside the breast, and most often that growth is happening in breast milk ducts. Feelings the lumps are how most women become aware that something is not right, and fortunately this leads them to see a doctor ASAP most of the time. What do breast cancer lumps look like? That’s hard to say because they’re not visible.
It is more what does breast cancer feel like, rather than what does breast cancer look like. The long-standing advice that has been given to women is to give yourself a breast self-examination a few times every month. Many women take advantage of the privacy during their time in the shower to do this, and it doesn’t take much time. If anything feels harder compared to the tissue around it, then you should make that appointment without delay. Whether you have a larger chest or a smaller one, this is something that you should do and again, it’s not challenging in any way.
Let’s look at what does breast cancer look like in greater detail here. Even if it saves just one woman from having their breast cancer metastasize into a much more dire problem then this putting out this type of information has real value.
We talked about how the milk ducts in breast are where cancer usually starts, and this is called ductal carcinoma. As this is the most common type of breast cancer what you can do with your breast self-exams is feel the tissue immediately around the nipple first. Then work out from there. Connective tissue breast cancer is sarcoma and not as common, but these lumps can be anywhere in the breast and in some cases may be hard to feel if they’re deep within the connective tissue. As you would expect, this becomes more of a problem for women who have bigger breasts.
Feeling lumps or other unnatural formations in the breast is the typical way that women make a breast cancer self-diagnosis, but with our discussion of what does breast cancer look like we can add that there can be visible signs of breast cancer too. These include:
Having constant feelings of discomfort in the armpit can also be sign of breast cancer. Women will know that is not uncommon to have breast tenderness or pain when they are going through their period. That discomfort is in both breasts and goes away once they’ve finished menstruating though. Another example that doesn’t fit in with what does breast cancer look like is to have ongoing pain in the breast that is not related to your cycle, and especially if the pain is in one breast only.
We won’t stray too far from talking about what does breast cancer look like, but it needs to be mentioned that breast cancer for men is a possibility too, and with men it usually happens more because of gene mutations rather than the standard causes of breast cancer. The general guidelines for what does breast cancer look like are much the same here for men. The primary difference of course is that lumps in breast tissue will be easier to find for men simply because they don’t have mammary glands there.
The last thing we’ll say around what does breast cancer look like is that if a diagnosis is made early enough then there’s plenty of reason to hope for favorable outcomes. Breast cancer treatment is much more effective, and medications like Nolvadex are highly regarded by doctors because they are proven effective for slowing the progression of breast cancer.