I Was a Man with Breast Cancer in a World Built to Treat Women. Here’s How It Changed Me

In the spring of 2009, I was told I had breast cancer—a diagnosis I didn’t even know a man could receive until it applied to me.A month earlier, I was wrestling with my two young boys. Ted, my five-year-old, rammed his head into me. A sharp pain shot through my chest, lasting a few seconds. I forgot about it until it happened again a week later. I was concerned it was my heart, but my nipple felt strangely irritated—as if I had chafed it while riding a boogie board. After the third jolt, I went to see my internist, who, while kneading my chest like a wad of sourdough, discovered a small lump. “It’s probably nothing,” he assured me, “but get a mammogram to be on the safe side.”Two days later, I found myself at the nearest breast center. I started filling out the intake forms before realizing many of the questions didn’t apply to me: “Date of my last period?” “Heavy or light flow?” “How many pregnancies have I had?” Finally, a nurse called out: “Mrs. Greenberg.”I stood up, as confusion washed over her face. She led me to a back entrance, then escorted me through a maze of service corridors so I wouldn’t cross paths with the female patients in their paper gowns and make them uncomfortable.In the imaging room, she positioned my meager breast tissue into the machine, pressing and twisting my pec into something resembling a pancake. As I tried to breathe through the discomfort, she reminded me that women have to suffer this indignity every year. Afterward, she snuck me back out like an enemy combatant and put me in an empty office. I perused the magazines: Oprah, Redbook, Women’s Health. And the pamphlets and flyers: “Bosom Buddies,” “Pink-Link,” “What Every Woman Should Know.” I opted for Women’s Health. Thirty minutes later, the radiologist walked in and asked me about my weekend. “Got any fun plans?” What? I thought. No small talk. Get right to it. Am I going to grow old? Am I going to get to see my kids graduate from college? Instead, I said, “I’ve got Clippers tickets for Saturday.” Finally, he told me my mammogram looked a little suspicious, “but it’s probably nothing.” I was starting to hear that a lot.He recommended that I get a biopsy and directed me to a breast clinic down the block that could fit me in that day. When I called, the receptionist asked: “Is this appointment for you?” At check-in, they handed me a short pink gown with cap sleeves. I changed into it and waited in the procedure room. Forty minutes later (the world of cancer, I was learning, is 90% waiting) a doctor strolled in. “So,” he said, “been to any interesting restaurants lately?” Again? I responded with curt, one-word answers, hoping he’d take the hint. “Nope… Yep… Maybe.”Eventually, he numbed the area, then stuck a fat needle into my chest. But he kept missing the right spot, like a monkey playing darts. When he finally hit the bull’s-eye, I felt a pain I had never felt before—a white-hot burning sensation. I was sweating, breathing hard, and for the first time thought: This might not be nothing.As I left, grateful to be back in pants, the doctor smiled. “You have to try Il Pastaio,” he said. “Order the tuna carpaccio.” At this moment I began to hate all doctors, even the ones I liked.That Friday, at 4:48 p.m., the phone rang. It had breast cancer. After the initial shock, everything started to move quickly—PET scans, blood tests, specialists, more waiting. Driving from appointment to appointment, I became acutely aware of the gap between the sick and the healthy; we inhabit two very different worlds. But I was also navigating a disease that did not cater to my gender—less than 1% of all breast cancer cases in the US occur in men. I was starting to feel a sense of isolation.