Mammography & breast cancer. Review on Dealing with Cancer

Last year my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were shocked to learn. It was stage III. It was'nt that we were not attentive. At first, it came up as a painful lump & was shown to Gynaecologist  who said it is normal to have such tumours in ladies. She prescribed few vitamins and asked to underto mammography. The report was normal. What a relief it was. Two months after the pain subdued and we were quite normal. I asked one of my uncles about it and he said your aunt too had developed such symptoms and rest assured it is not cancer. Approximately three months after the mammography, my wife one day told me that her right breast seems to be solidifying and nipple has also gone inside. On that day in my office I surfed websites to get information on what it could be. To my surprise, the symptoms were truly that of cancer.

We once again approached the Gyno, who was astonished like us and referred us to a Cancer Specialist. It was 10.00 p.m. The specialist told only me that most probably it is cancer but remained unsure until biopsy is done and asked for permission. I quickly agreed to and he performed biopsy. He gave me 3 samples and asked me to courier one of them to Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. In the next few days I made up my mind to approach the best known treatment centres for cancer i.e. tata memorial. On the sixth day of biopsy, one of the diagnostic centres informed me that their Doctor wants to meet us with the mammography report(film). He told us that the doctor who did mammography has shown causalness and had he read the film properly, things could not have been so bad.

On my way to Tata Memorial, I was slowly making up my mind to file a criminal negligence case against the doctor by getting the opinion of Doctors at Tata Memorial on the said film. I paid for the review of that film at Tata Memorial and one radiologist looking at the film said " Yes" there are signs and it should have been reported the radiologist who had performed mammography.

After getting more opinions on this issue from the oncologists at breast unit of Tata Memorial,  I dropped the idea of filing a consumer case because most of those in medical fraternity I met were of the view that mammography performed on a lady less than 35 yrs of age is not corroborative as  the breast is too dense and it is not of much use on age less than 35.

I am writing this review so as to bring a pertinent point and that is " why the government and advertising agencies are hellbent on giving a view that mammography is to be done by every lady to get rid of risk of breast cancer when the medical fraternity does not rely too much on it"

My wife has shown enough strength and underwent mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. People will be glad that she responded to the treatment very well and has today rejoined her duty.