Deadly Smoke

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

He was a light sleeper, and I was a ‘dead to the world’ sleeper. He was a morning person but I was an extreme morning person…my eyes often opening between 4 and 5 AM. As soon as I begin to wake up, my mind starts racing. And I have to suppress the urge to tell him everything. No time like the morning to spread joy.

But if I twitched a few too many times, he would start to wake up. If that happened, a deep, hoarse voice would emerge from my husband’s body. Sometimes I imagined the sound was coming from a troll emerging from a dark and dense forest, bellowing its first warning. Well, his words weren’t actually a warning. They were more of a command.

“Get up. You are waking me up,” he would say.

I never wanted to get up. It was much more fun to lay in bed and think of all the glorious things that would flood into my mind in the morning. To stay in the warm cocoon next to him and feel morning joy was one of the best parts of my day. The trick was not to wake him up.

It was 5:30 AM and I had been awake for at least 20 minutes. My morning surge of energy was beginning and I desperately wanted to tell him everything. I pulled the covers over my head to hide the light from my iPhone and started to scroll through the morning news. It was all terrible news, and I quickly switched to scrolling through email when I abruptly caught my breath, and my body stiffened.

It was the title of the email that made me start. It read ‘Firefighter breast cancer’.

The sender was a man in Kansas that I had spoken with a few times about his experience battling cancer. He had written about his experience and came on my podcast to share his wisdom. He also volunteered regularly on a cancer ward to talk with patients and give them inspiration. And he knew that my husband had male breast cancer.

I also remembered that there was a link between firefighting as an occupation and a greater risk of acquiring male breast cancer. How strong it was, I couldn’t recall. But male breast cancer is a rare disease.

My husband suddenly took a big breath. It was the stiffening of my body that had nearly woken him. I resolved not to get up. More than anything, I wanted to be next to him when I read the email.

Heart sinking, I opened the email. I could never hear the words ‘male breast cancer’ without thinking of the wives and children that were affected. It triggered the trauma that I had experienced coming to terms with the fact that my husband was not immortal. And that one day I would lose him.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many women there were in the U.S. that were grieving their husband’s cancer diagnosis right now — and had trudged through sorrow, anger and guilt the way I had. We could probably pack a few football stadiums. I clicked on the email to open it.

“A contact at my oncology unit recently surveyed the county of firefighters to encourage early cancer screenings,” the email began. “She was shocked to learn about a high incidence of male breast cancer in this small population. One station has two men diagnosed.”

Two men in one station? My legs began fidgeting. This didn’t make sense.

Purely by the numbers – a single man had an approximate 1 in 700 lifetime risk of contracting male breast cancer in his lifetime. But even that number wasn’t correct for these men. They were working and presumably younger than 65, so the chance of each man getting male breast cancer would be much less than 1 in 700, as many men acquire cancer when they are older. I made a mental note to look up the average age of firefighters to put this number in perspective.

The sleeping figure next to me stirred and made a loud sighing noise.

That was close, I thought. He nearly woke up.

“She suspects environmental (occupational) factors at work,” the email continued. “That is as far as the story goes at this point, but I thought you would be interested.”

Of course, I was interested. Anything that would bring me closer to understanding how such a rare cancer had occurred in my husband was interesting to me. From my reading, I knew that firefighters had a higher risk of many cancers, not just male breast cancer. It was thought that their exposure to toxic, cancer-causing smoke was the culprit. If any group should qualify for earlier cancer screening, firefighters should be on the list.

I opened a browser and began to search for ‘smoke’, ‘fire’, and ‘male breast cancer’, which led me to a Veterans Administration (VA) website about military burn pits and the risk of male breast cancer. Apparently, it had been a common military practice to burn trash and other waste in burn pits in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southwest Asia. The VA was announcing that it had designated male breast cancer as one of several rare cancers that was presumed to be caused by exposure to burn pits and other environmental toxins during the Persian Gulf War and other wars after 9/11. Under the new PACT Act, veterans could file for compensation and health care benefits if they had developed male breast cancer.

Soldier at a military burn pit.

There had also been a big cluster of male breast cancer in firefighters who were exposed to the toxic dust of 9/11 when the Twin Towers collapsed. They had rushed to the burning buildings to save lives and in many cases, sacrificing their own life in the process. That the smoke they were breathing might cause cancer wasn’t on their minds.

I started to type furiously trying hard not to make any big movements.

Yes, I would be happy to talk to this person and share what I knew with them or the families of the firefighters. Would their wives be interested in talking with me? Were they told that they had a higher risk of developing cancer from exposure to toxins in smoke?

Here was a group that had a known higher risk for male breast cancer. Should they be getting mammograms?

“Get up, please,” a troll-like voice said next to me. “You are waking me up.”

The micro-movements of my fingers typing the email response must have been the final straw. Now, I would have to get up.

As I rose from the bed, I could feel my heart sinking again. Male breast cancer was an ignored disease. Of this, I had no doubt. It was also beginning to dawn on me that rates of males breast cancer in firefighters might be much higher than anyone realized.

The room was still dark as I shuffled toward the bedroom door. I stopped short of reaching for the door handle so that I could finish my train of thought.

Could the myth that breast cancer is only a disease of women ever be overcome? Would men ever submit to a painful breast-squeezing test for a cancer that they thought would only affect women?

*****************************************************************

If you would like to read other posts, here are a few:

1. How It Began. This story is the origins of my Substack and tells the story of the first moment when we learned of my husband’s breast cancer diagnosis. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/how-it-began

2. A Beach Surprise. A nice day at the beach turns into something else thanks to our mischievous animal. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/a-beach-surprise

3. A Queen. The story of a dear friend that lost her husband to breast cancer.

   https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/a-queen

4. The Phone Call. He waited to tell his family about his cancer until the last moment. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/the-phone-call

*********************************************************************************************************

Thank you for being one of my readers. I appreciate you very much! If you’d like to support my work you can do so by:

• Hearting this post, so that others are encouraged to read it

• Leaving a comment (I do my best to respond to each of them), which increases engagement and visibility of my posts

• Sharing this post by email or on social media

• Taking out a free or paid subscription to this Substack

• Leaving me a tip by buying me a coffee.