About that risk assessment

There is all this talk these days about what you can do to reduce your risk of cancer, dementia, chicken pox, or the common cold, among a million other things. You know all the advice - eat broccoli, exercise, don't drink, lose weight, exercise, eat margarine no eat butter, drink red wine no white - and all it does is confuse the crap out of us.

Then they start to give people personal risk assessment for an ailment and expect us to believe them. How much conflicting medical advice do you hear on a given day? A lot. Eat red meat and chocolate, no don't, yes, well a little, and the famous words - in moderation. How can you be expected to believe anything?

When you are told what your risk of some thing is - whether being diagnosed with cancer or being hit by lightening, don't you always harbor that little thought in the corner of  your brain that of course they are only talking about other people and not you or anyone you care about. Its always going to affect those other faceless people you don't know.

So why all the surprise when a new study shows that one in five women don't believe their breast cancer risk? I can honestly tell you I was very surprised by both my cancer diagnoses. I thought my back pain was the result of muscle strain and not the permanent debilitating state of the disks in my spine. I thought my aches and pains that turned out to be rheumatoid and fibromyalgia were just normal aging.

Sometimes I think, they were all wrong and I am really a healthy person who can live the way I used to - working full time, having a social life, and going off on adventures regularly that involve beaches, mountains, and the great outdoors.

Seriously, we hear so much conflicting medical advice and then if someone gives us a risk assessment, we are supposed to believe them? I think a risk assessment is like listening to the weather forecast - there is a good chance Saturday will be rainy and it should clear out for Sunday but watch out for a hurricane next week. How do they really know?

Are we overdoing it?

More women are opting for double mastectomies, even if they do not have cancer in both breasts. Here are the numbers:

"The rate for women choosing to remove both breasts when only one has cancer jumped from 6.7% in 1997 to 24% in 2005,..."

"About 70% of women in the United States who have both breasts removed after a cancer diagnosis don't have a proven medical reason for undergoing the procedure,..."

So why are we doing this? Lots of reasons:

• Implants have fewer problems than in the past.
• Plastic surgery has had many advances.
• We want it now mentality.
• The overly hyped awareness of breast cancer

If we look at these last two reasons, they may be the root of all the reasons. In the past decade or so, we have been accustomed to the instant gratification or instant problem solving. Amazon started bringing us our purchases overnight. Problems are more easily solved. We can find information instantly so we want to fix things instantly as well.

Pinkification has also caused more awareness and availability of information.

"A growing awareness of breast cancer survivorship makes undergoing mastectomy not as foreign or frightening as perhaps it once was. An online search shows a seemingly limitless number of breast cancer support groups, with a growing collection dedicated to women considering preventive surgery.

Dr. Mark Sultan, chief of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at St. Luke's/Roosevelt and Beth Israel Medical Centers in New York, said he's seen a 20% increase in five years of high-risk, yet cancer-free women coming to his office seeking mastectomies.

These patients often arrive telling him what kind of surgery they want because they've read about certain procedures online, and in many cases, they've viewed hundreds of before-and-after photos as well."

These are examples of how the world of medicine and being a patient is changing. But maybe we are overdoing it. A double mastectomy is not a minor surgery. I have heard of women being in surgery for 10 or 12 hours with multiple surgeons and months of recovery. Never mind the problems of lymphedema and other risks in the future. 

I think I would prefer to keep my body as intact as possible if I possibly can.