Menopause care is lacking, leading to delays in care professionals
Dr. Stephanie Faubion of the Menopause Society said medical schools need better menopause training to prevent misdiagnosis and improve patient care.
Alexis Klimpl felt itchy. So, like everyone else, she hurt it. But her fingers curled around something else. A huge lump on her right breast.
About a year ago, the 25-year-old was lying in bed with his boyfriend and shot him immediately. Her face fell. “What?” he asked naively. “There’s a clump in my boobs literally,” she said. They felt it – maybe it’s a bone? It was difficult. However, if it was a bone, could you move around in a circle? Was it a cyst? A benign lump? or …
breast cancer. It’s probably breast cancer. 24 years old. Diagnosis affecting more than 300,000 women each year in the United States, killing more than 40,000 women each year.
Klimpl is one of 300,000 people and is one of the women under the age of 40 who have been diagnosed with breast cancer in recent years. However, she is also one of the four million survivors currently living in the United States.
Breast cancer treatment and side effects including menopause
Klimpl lives in San Diego but is originally from Hawaii. She is peaceful underwater and loves to surf. Her planned beach trip to Indonesia was scheduled for several days after first feeling the chunks. As the trip was planned, money was spent and she pushed her against her. The lump has grown and grown.
After she returned, the diagnosis confirmed it. Her doctors struggled to try and reassure her and explain it to be extremely rare. “She kept looking at my mom more than I did, as if she was a patient,” Climp says.
“That’s still relatively rare,” says Dr. Eric Weiner, director of the Yale Cancer Center for Young Breast Cancer, but “but that’s going up at all, and of course, we don’t understand the cause, so it’s not for screening because we don’t understand the cause.” Only mammography for young women under the age of 40 may not be that effective because the breast tissue is dense.
But why is multiple cancers on the rise in young people? No one knows for sure. “The increased incidence of breast cancer and early onset are likely to be serious concern and multifactorial,” said Dr. Carmen Calfa, breast oncologist and co-director of the medical care at the Survival Cancer Program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the Miami Health System. “We need to understand all risk factors (including genetics) and make every effort to correct any modifiable factors.”
After being diagnosed, Klimpl collapsed in the patient room. She had already experienced enough grief after losing her father to bile duct cancer in 2017.
But Klimpl was not a terminal. She had triple-positive breast cancer. In other words, tumor cells contained a large number of estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors. This type of cancer received hormone therapy and was only stage 2. It’s not the oldest, but not the worst.
Consultations continued with plastic surgeons, radiologists and oncologists. Freezing eggs was a priority as chemotherapy could undermine fertility and the possibility of natural birth. She laments the process – an injection intended to grow your ovaries to produce more eggs. You look pregnant, the mood rattles your brain, emotional sacrifice. After inhaling blood, it thrusts, thrusts, or draws blood.
Next came Cheotherapy (Taxotere and Carboplatin) and hormonal medications (Herceptin and Perjeta) and cold capping to try to preserve the hair. Nausea consumed her during treatment.
“I’m already nauseous, and this nausea was like the type that went through your bones and veins.
Bad rashes also dotted her face, which drained her self-esteem. She was isolated and upset to protect her immune system. He added: “I couldn’t be in the water and I was a bit lost.”
The drug is certainly toxic, but it’s incredible considering how it was decades ago. “We now consider breast cancer to be a family of diseases and we can name different types of breast cancer, all of which are undergoing very different treatments,” Weiner says. “So our treatments are much more targeted and much more sophisticated.”
It’s better to have more options than fewer options. “It’s good for patients because the knowledge we gained over 30 years is really important,” says Dr. Naoto T. Ueno, director of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center.
She followed a surgery to remove her tumor and lymph nodes, followed by a double mastectomy. She didn’t have BRCA or any other breast cancer genes, but she was craving certainty. Now she is taking hormone blockers that are likely to have experienced menopause for the next decade. For a 25-year-old, there is a lack of resources.
“Menopause has side effects such as bone pain, hair loss and mood swings,” she says. “So they’re all pretty easy to manage, but that’s exactly what comes with it.” Anyone who is worried about menopause symptoms after breast cancer can check out the American Cancer Society tips.
Klimpl’s body will return to normal once it stops the hormone blocker and can become pregnant if you choose. “I don’t know if I can carry my baby until I try it,” she says.
She found connections with others on social media in a similar situation, and it encourages her to speak up. But for now, more than anything, she’s excited to surf.
Breast Cancer Tips: “If you feel a lump, don’t ignore it.”
Those worried about breast cancer should talk to their healthcare providers, look for reputable information from sources like the American Cancer Society, and consider taking breast cancer risk assessment tools.
Kalfa is happy that Klimpl seeks care. “If you feel a lump, don’t ignore it,” she says. “If someone says, ‘You’re too young to get breast cancer,’ don’t stop until your concern (and) symptoms have been fully and thoroughly evaluated. ”
Also, “For patients with stage 1 or 2 or 3 stage breast cancer, the goal of treatment is for them to reach cancer-free conditions and hopefully they won’t hear from that cancer again,” says Winner. “Depending on the various prognostic characteristics, some people know that there is a low or less risk of breast cancer recurrence.”
And “Even women with advanced cancer can live with excellent quality of life over the years due to ongoing research and development,” adds Dr. Dawn Hirschman, associate director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University.
Klimpl recently visited Hawaii just before he began chemotherapy, and went for his first swim in the ocean. Full-sake moment for her. Warm water on her skin, warm water in her hair, let go of the worries. The sadness overwhelmed her.
“One of the things that made me feel like I was getting close to my dad was surfing and being in the water,” she says.
A week or so later, Goosebumps overwhelmed her body when she finally surfed again in San Diego. The sun came out after the clouds had been covering the sky for weeks. “Interesting timing,” she says. “Maybe my dad was shining?”
