Two Nashville men raising breast cancer awareness for different reasons
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the statistics are not good. Nearly 300,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, but they’re not the only ones who should be concerned. We found two Mid-South men who are united in fighting breast cancer for very different reasons.
“He said, ‘Did anybody talk to you?’ I was like no. And he said, ‘Well that’s good and bad. He said, the good; they listened to me. Bad, I have to be the one to tell you you’ve got breast cancer,’” said Lance Edmiston.
At that moment back in 2018, Edmiston became a statistic. The 1-in-1,000 men who will get breast cancer in their lifetime.
“I still didn’t believe I had it even though I knew I did. It just wasn’t sinking in,” he added.
“It’s something that men need to know is possible,” said Dr. Stephen Schleicher, Chief Medical Officer and Medical Oncologist at Tennessee Oncology.
Schleicher said 3,000 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and nearly 500 will die.
“We are not doing routine screenings for them so anything that happens on one male breast versus the other is always a red flag,” Schleicher said.
Edmiston had a radical mastectomy on his left side and a voluntary one on his right side. Today he is cancer free with a story to tell and advice to give. When asked, what he would tell a man who thinks breast cancer couldn’t possibly happen to him. Edmiston’s response was simple. “I would tell him on first-hand experience that it can.”
Scott Levine’s cancer journey deals with his wife, Sheila.
“It was hard. She found a lump and went through the process and as I said she was diagnosed with triple negative and what you learn is how strong you can be when you need to be,” Levine said.
Seven years ago, Sheila, Levine’s high school sweetheart, got the breast cancer news. She went through 16 cycles of chemotherapy before going into remission.
“Because she is still here, we decided that there’s a reason for that, and that reason was for us to find out a way for us to pay it back,” said Levine.
Scott is now an ambassador for Men Wear Pink, raising money and awareness in the fight against breast cancer. He fights for more years, more memories and eventually a world without breast cancer.
“It’s something I hope to do for a very long time and continue to raise money to eventually make breast cancer go away,” said Levine.
When it comes to men with breast cancer, Schleicher said men are at higher risk for breast cancer IF their grandmother, mother or sister had breast cancer and tested positive for certain gene mutations.
WSMV4′s Marius Payton is a proud member of Men Wear Pink raising money to fight this disease. Click to donate to his cause.
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