2023-10-08 09:00:00
On his 50th birthday, Christian Lebel received a diagnosis that turned his life upside down: he learned that he was part of an extreme minority of men with breast cancer, forcing him to undergo an operation. surgery to have a chance of getting out of it.
February 2017. In a hospital gown, Christian waits for his exams in a waiting room full of women. Everyone is wondering what he is doing here, sitting in a breast disease center in Laval.
“Oh he’s in the wrong department,” a patient told him.
“I told him: ‘No, there are men who can get breast cancer.’ There was total silence in the place,” he recalled six years later.
In fact, breast cancer affects 1 in 934 men, compared to 1 in 8 women, according to the most recent data from the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation. Christian is part of this data.
Photo Agence QMI / Joël Lemay
That day, he was waiting for a mammogram, an ultrasound and a biopsy: three exams to be performed in the same day because of the urgency of the situation.
A few hours earlier, he had met his surgeon for other health problems, taking the opportunity to tell her regarding a lump he had detected on his right breast a few days before. Thinking that it was a cyst or an ingrown hair, he had not been more alarmed until then.
More than a slap
“She tells me to lie down on the table and she feels me. In her eyes, I really saw that it was serious and then she said “We’re going to the breast clinic,” he said. It happened very quickly in my head. I was like in a tunnel, she was walking so fast, I said to myself, ‘My God, what’s happening?'”
The verdict finally came on March 7, his 50th birthday: Christian had stage 3 breast cancer. “It was total denial,” he recalled.
Photo Agence QMI / Joël Lemay
“It’s not a slap, it’s a blow from a club that I received in the face,” he confided when we met him in a lingerie store in Laval aimed at women who had breast cancer.
After the shock came the announcement of the illness to his family.
“I took care of my mother and then my children, how can I announce that…,” he testified in tears. We think we’re strong, a superman, but we’re just human at some point. »
“While I was sick, I went 11 months without pay,” recalled the man who worked as a postman. He considers that this period was the most “ rough » of his life because he was no longer able to meet the needs of his family.
See the positive
A month following his diagnosis, Christian was on the operating table for a mastectomy. In her case, we had to remove 19 out of 20 mammary glands in her right breast.
“My family supported me through all of this. During the surgery, I kept making jokes “, he mentioned with a small smile.
The operation was finally a success and he was then able to hear the long-awaited word: “negative”.
In his misfortune, Christian was lucky, because he escaped without chemotherapy or radiotherapy. He still had to start hormone therapy treatment – to prevent his cancer from recurring – and had to take pills daily for 10 years.
After two years of stress following surgery, Christian finally learned he was in remission. Since then, he has been extremely involved in the cause of breast cancer, but above all he wants to help men who do not dare to talk regarding it.
« [Le cancer] has been a positive side of my life. I knew I might get through this, he said. I grew up with it. »
Male breast cancer in figures
– In Canada, approximately 270 men are affected by breast cancer each year (compared to 28,600 women) and 55 die from it (compared to 5,500 women).
– Breast cancer generally strikes men aged 60 to 70.
– Less than 1% of all breast cancers affect men.
Source: Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation
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