Why Breast Cancer can be the DEADLIEST Cancer a MAN can Have

Dorothy: [00:00:00] I’m having a hot flash. Those are not the words you expect to hear from a guy that’s walking into your office who’s six foot tall and from East Texas. But this is the same man that went on a very long journey of breast cancer, not once but twice. And he’s here today to tell you why breast cancer can be the deadliest cancer a man can have.

Let’s Talk About Your Breast, a different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose, the Breast Center of Excellence and a Texas treasure. You’re going to hear frank discussions about tough topics and you’re going to learn why knowing about your breast could save your life. Join us as we hear another story and we answer those tough questions that you may have.

Hi, I’m Dorothy Gibbons and I’m CEO and co founder of The Rose, breast Imaging Center of Excellence, [00:01:00] and we’re here to talk about your breast. Today we have with us Ronnie Pace, who has the unique title of being a male breast cancer survivor. So welcome, Ronnie.

Ronnie: Thank you, Dorothy. It is an honor and pleasure to be here because, uh, my mission since April of 2013 has been to bring male breast cancer awareness to the public, because when I was first told I had a lump in my breast, I had no thoughts of anything except, so what?

I soon found out, so what, could be serious. It was serious. It was malignant. Fortunately, it was fairly small. It had not gone outside its boundaries. It did not metastasize. So I was able to have a mastectomy, like women do. And, uh, because of my test results, I was not required to have any type of, uh, radiology or the hard core chemotherapy. I went on a, um, Tamoxifen after the surgery [00:02:00] had healed.

Dorothy: So, Ronnie, let’s stop there just a minute. Your, your breast cancer was found in a, on an incidental finding, right?

Ronnie: Correct. I was having a cough, a slight cough, and my pulmonologist said my cough is due to slight acid reflux. But the CT scan showed a lump in my right breast. And which I had not even known about, obviously, because I wasn’t doing any type of self exam, and my doctor wasn’t doing any exams. So just by the grace of God was I spared, uh, the prognosis of waiting too late. Because as everyone knows, time is not your friend when it comes to cancer treatment.

Dorothy: No, it’s not. So, let’s talk about that first time you were diagnosed, because you’re a two time male breast cancer survivor, right?

Ronnie: Correct.

Dorothy: And the doctor said, Let’s go and do the mammogram and all of that. And while you’re waiting on the biopsy, if I [00:03:00] remember your story, you didn’t mention that to your wife.

Ronnie: Correct. Not that I was a male macho kind of guy, but my wife loves me a lot. I love my wife a lot. I was trying to save her from having to worry about something, because I did the research on Dr. Google like a lot of us do. I had a 1 percent chance of malignancy. I thought 1 percent chance, I didn’t want to bother her with that.

So, I rocked and rolled for about two or three weeks, thinking I was going to be okay. Then when the, uh, pathology came in and said it was malignant, then I had to go tell my wife. And it was, uh, really a, a bad situation because I had to deny her the chance to be there for me, to support me. And so, I advise everybody, don’t keep anything from your spouse.

Dorothy: Oh, that’s, that’s so true. But, but, that’s not unusual for men. They don’t always want to talk about things that have to do with health. I mean I don’t think that’s unusual even with the men that you’ve talked with who have had breast cancer. You’ve seen [00:04:00] that

Ronnie: it’s funny about i’ve talked to four or five men over the last couple of years with breast cancer and most of them have their wives call me because they don’t want to talk to me.

Dorothy: Well that that proves my point men aren’t going to talk about their health.

Ronnie: So it’s kind of strange that they want— one of them, she said her dad was too mad to talk. And that’s part of the grieving process has gone through that— phase of being angry.

Dorothy: Let’s talk a little bit more about that. Cause that psychological impact on you always fascinated me. You know, or on men in general. So what, what happens? What do you do psychologically?

Ronnie: Well, the Kübler-Ross, uh, her book on death and dying was very much on point for me. Cause the first thing you do is denial. There’s no way it could be breast cancer. Then it is breast cancer. The second stage is the, uh. Bargaining or woulda, coulda, shoulda. Well, in my case, I could have done anything different. It was what it was. I did nothing to cause it. There’s really no known cause that I know of for men to [00:05:00] have breast cancer. Um, So then the next stage would be, uh, anger, which a lot of men are who call me. They’re angry about the fact that they’ve got this disease. Some of them think it’s a female disease. What’s the matter about that? I explained it’s not a female disease. We have milk ducks just like women do. So we just had to be lucky guys who get cancer. Uh, then the next stage would be depression. So I tell people, be careful with these stages because you have to feel these stages to get to acceptance where you can deal with it on a very logical basis.

One guy I helped with, he, uh, would never talk to me for four weeks. His wife called me every week to get an update on what was going on. I said, please go get a biopsy and quit worrying about it. He refused to get a biopsy for four weeks. So he fretted and rang his hands and she called, ringing her hands. Finally she called and they said, we want to get your advice. Went to San Antonio and got a biopsy from MD Anderson. And it’s, it’s a benign. [00:06:00] So everybody celebrated, you know. Way. Yay. But the point is that you don’t have to put such a kind of misery. Just go get it checked out and be sure of what you got.

Dorothy: That’s good advice. Good advice. And for a woman, if she finds something, And her spouse or son, brother, hears them talking about a lump in their breast. She, she has a role to play in all that, like you’re talking about. Really encouraging that man to go in there and get that tested. Ronnie, the first time I met you, you came into my office and, um, our audience needs to know, Ronnie is a tall guy and he’s, you know, he’s tall guy and he comes in and he sits down and he said, You know, I’m having a hot flash, just like you women have, and I got so tickled because it never occurred to me, as much as I know about breast cancer, never occurred to me that your treatment would have created those side effects just like a woman. So tell us, how did you handle [00:07:00] that?

Ronnie: Well, knowledge to me is always power. So if you know what’s going on, you don’t get too goosey about it. You just deal with it.

Dorothy: Yeah.

Ronnie: So I knew what was going on because my body was being robbed of estrogen. Which is what happens to women due to menopause. So when I give some talks around town, I tell women, I’m really one of y’all. I’ve had no estrogen in my system. I’ve had a mastectomy. I’ve had a mammogram. Uh, I said, so, you know, we’re a lot alike in lots of ways.

Dorothy: Mm hmm.

Ronnie: And, um, but no, it’s been a, it’s been a, uh, nine years. April 2013, so. The sad thing for me is all this work that you’ve done and I’ve done, there’s been very little change in the male breast cancer awareness arena.

Dorothy: Now, talk to us about the, why it’s so important. Men have a very different outcome than women.

Ronnie: The mortality rate for men is much higher because they wait so long to get it, uh, diagnosed. Uh, it’s usually, mine was a size of, like a half inch, size of a marble. [00:08:00] My oncologist told me that most of his patients, male male patients, size like a golf ball. Some of them even protruding through the skin. And so the treatment’s a lot different, a lot more aggressive, and the prognosis is not good. Uh, so that’s why I say, if you got a lump, go get it checked out. Don’t be putting it off and play the 99 percent game, I tell people.

Dorothy: So of the, what, 2,700 men who will be diagnosed this year, there’s an awful statistic that 25 percent of them will die of disease before five years is up.

Ronnie: Correct.

Dorothy: Yeah, that that’s sobering and if nothing else that that should encourage us to be sure that the men have it checked out.

Ronnie: I’ve had some of the lectures that you’ve been with me on the women come and say my mom’s gonna hear about this when I get home.

Dorothy: Mm hmm.

Ronnie: That’s incorrect. We’re gonna take charge of the worst enemies.

Dorothy: Ah.

Ronnie: We don’t take care of ourselves.

Dorothy: True.

Ronnie: So I’m encouraged that we’re getting some [00:09:00] type of play from the wives. They’re going to talk to their husbands about getting it checked. Um, and I’ve lobbied for a long time, but doctors should give male patients a, uh, exam for their breasts, but doctors haven’t seen any reason to do that so far. It doesn’t take five minutes that you have the peace of mind.

Dorothy: That’s true.

Ronnie: My doctor does me because he knows my history. I’m the only — forty years he’s been a doctor, he’s the first patient he’s had was me.

Dorothy: Really?

Ronnie: Yep.

Dorothy: Wow, wow. So now, how did you find the second breast cancer? That, that’s another story.

Ronnie: Yeah, I got lots of stories. I was doing a video at MD Anderson for a group out of New York. And, uh, kind of like we’re talking, just stories. And the videographer said, take off your shirt, let us see the incision for the mastectomy that was done. I said, well, if you can stand it, I can stand it. So I took my shirt off and put my hand on my chest to feel the scar. And when I did, I felt a lump just about an inch below the [00:10:00] scar.

And of course, that was a heart stopper. And so I finished the video, excused myself, went into the men’s room, took my shirt off, and there it was. It was a real gotcha moment.

Dorothy: Mmm.

Ronnie: But you know, in human nature you always say, I’m going to denial it again, I’m going to go back to the book from Kübler-Ross, I said that can’t be malignant, not twice in a row, come on.

Dorothy: That’s very, very rare.

Ronnie: I had a biopsy within two days and it surely was malignant, so within two months I was having a second surgery on my right chest. It was determined to be a chest wall recurrence. And so after this time we decided to go ahead and do 33 days of radiation, which is, I’ll tell you guys right now, it’s no big deal. It doesn’t hurt, it takes about 30 seconds, you’re done. It’s peace of mind that you’ve got this thing. A little more treated, treated in the way it could be. But just follow the oncologist’s suggestions. My onco score was 11 out of 100, which could be an 8 percent chance of recurrence. So that’s so much for [00:11:00] statistics.

Dorothy: That is true. That is true. Now, what, how do people react when you tell them you’re a two time male breast cancer survivor?

Ronnie: Most of the guys look at me with disbelief and say, No way. I said, yeah, well, if I had it twice, did they really get excited then? And they said, what do I do? I said, well, have yourself checked out, um, by your doctor.

Do your own self exam. Just feel around up here. You know what a lump feels like. But most times, because women are, are not shocked by it, because they’ve, so many of their friends have it. 248,000 women this year will have breast cancer diagnosis. And 2200 – 2700 men. So that’s the problem with the disparity in numbers. We get very little play.

Dorothy: Now, you strongly believe that because there hasn’t been a lot of research in this area, on the treatment, that something needs to be done. And I know, Ronnie, you’ve sat on so many committees, and you’ve been with the DOD group, and you’ve [00:12:00] represented the male breast cancer patient in so many arenas. But what do you think needs to happen with that?

Ronnie: Well, it wasn’t until September, I think, of 2020, uh, that the FDA finally allowed testing for men to be, uh, Handle, because it was before that. The drugs I’m treated with are the same drugs for women. So, they were never able to even try it on women. There’s no clinical trials on women for the drugs.

And I still believe the DNA of men and the DNA of women are different. So we will respond differently to the tamoxifen didn’t work on me.

Dorothy: Ah.

Ronnie: Because my DNA is different.

Dorothy: Right.

Ronnie: And up in Washington, I did a couple of panel meetings up there. One of the doctors, he agreed with me that there needs to be some more research on men, how they respond to certain drugs.

Dorothy: Well, if that happened, then the treatment could very easily be changed, true? And perhaps that recurrence rate wouldn’t be the same. Is that a possibility?

Ronnie: That’s what you hope, is that, uh, because tamoxifen is a gold standard for [00:13:00] women. It works most of the time.

Dorothy: So, you know, Ronnie, you have an incredible career. Civil engineer, you’ve been, uh, you’re certified in civil, family, and CPS mediation, certified as an arbitrator, you’re licensed in Texas real estate, you’re licensed in, uh, Texas Department of Insurance, you’ve had a stunning career, and you’re also an author. And I, uh, And you wrote the book, The Three C’s, and it’s called, The Only Book You Need to Find Your Life Partner. So what prompted you to buy, to write this? And this was before your diagnosis, wasn’t it?

Ronnie: Well, like a lot of people, I’ve been divorced, and I felt like there was some reason why we have such a high divorce rate. We keep making the same choices, and they’re wrong. So I sat down and [00:14:00] realized the things that I’d done over and over again that caused a failure, could have been done differently.

I wrote the book to help people who are in a bad marriage or going into a new marriage and want to be sure they had to do it right to read it and look at the things on the front end rather than the back end. Once you got kids and cars and dogs and cats, it’s hard to say when you call this thing off.

So going in, you have to have the willingness to say, you know, I love you, but we just can’t work together. I’ve done mediation for married couples for many years and, um, Had they known ahead of time what they’d be like, they wouldn’t have got married to start with.

Dorothy: That’s true.

Ronnie: But they don’t answer the right questions. So the book gets you to questions to ask and realize that you’re not compatible.

Dorothy: Ah, yes, it’s, it’s quite a read.

Ronnie: Thank you.

Dorothy: Yeah. So, you also have a very large family, and I was always curious, you have two daughters?

Ronnie: Two daughters, my first wife, and we have a stepdaughter, Judy, second wife.

Dorothy: Mm [00:15:00] hmm.

Ronnie: And we have 14 grandkids.

Dorothy: Fourteen.

Ronnie: Fourteen.

Dorothy: Ah, last time it was 13 that we talked. They’ve been busy. So, when you were going through this diagnosis and you went through all the psychological stages, did any of your family ever look at you or did you ever pick up that you were no longer the white knight? You were no longer the invincible guy of the family. Did that ever happen?

Ronnie: I think it did not happen. I think because it’s how we deal with adversity, not adversity itself. As you said, I’m kind of a stand up guy, so I didn’t let it get me down.

Dorothy: Ah, that is true. And then I wondered, um, what would you want to see in the breast cancer arena, especially for men over these next 50 years, let’s say you could jump ahead 50 years. What, and you’re [00:16:00] looking back, what would you hope to find then?

Ronnie: The first thing I see happen is to have more awareness. Newspapers, media publications, there’s just not, nobody knows, I said nobody, very few people know that the third week of October is male breast cancer awareness week. We know October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month for women, but we get one week a year, but nobody talks about it.

Dorothy: That’s true.

Ronnie: So awareness is number one. Number two would be better, uh, research on medications. Because if men knew they had a potential to have breast cancer, they’ve seen a lot of women, including their wives, go through the ordeals of breast cancer if you wait too late.

Dorothy: Mm hmm.

Ronnie: I think get men out there to at least go sneak off to have to, to a doctor get it checked.

Dorothy: Of course, getting men to a doctor is the first challenge.

Ronnie: Well, if they have enough fear in them that this thing could be dangerous, they may decide it’s not worth waiting on.

Dorothy: True.

Ronnie: We’re not totally stupid, we’re just a little stupid.

Dorothy: [00:17:00] I don’t know, I’d go there. Oh, well, goodness. Well, tell us, do you have anything else that you’d like the audience to know?

Ronnie: Well, my time is always available for anybody who wants to call me to talk about male breast cancer. My number’s here at The Rose. They’ll direct you over to me. And I’ve had men call me from Arizona, Louisiana, North Carolina. And they call me and it’s filled with trepidation. Some of them are crying, some of them are scared to death. And about 30, 45 minutes later, they’re calmed down, they’re laughing, joking, telling stories. So, it’s important to share this with somebody who understands. And I love women like most guys do, but they just have a different perspective than men.

Dorothy: That’s true.

Ronnie: It’s like women can’t talk to men about his breast cancer, we can’t talk about their breast cancer.

Dorothy: Yes. Yes.

Ronnie: So I don’t, it’s just awareness and a contact point that we talk to each other and make them realize that you’re not alone. Go back to statistics, uh, I think University of Colorado [00:18:00] years ago had a, um, survey of 100 men, 6 0r 7 percent said they would not tell anybody they had breast cancer because they thought it was embarrassing. That’s a shame.

Dorothy: That’s a shame.

Ronnie: They robbed themselves and their families of the awareness and the public from the awareness too.

Dorothy: Right. It’s very hard for men to come forward. Very hard to be public about it.

Ronnie: I don’t understand that. I mean, if it’s your best interest to tell somebody, tell somebody. But you’re also helping somebody else is what bothers me. Denying, if I’d known about it, I would have been scared to death. If you said you have a lump in your chest, I would have said, so what?

Dorothy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Ronnie: I was real cavalier about it at the beginning, and I’m not cavalier at all. In fact, I get pretty excited about people telling me breasts are lumps.

Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah.

Ronnie: But I think this is, uh, better testing, uh, medicine for testing for medicines. Awareness is the big thing. And get men to start calling each other and say, did you know a ________ got breast cancer? But maybe they will. Maybe it’s just a transition, men, to go to the Stone Age. You know, we’re not wearing clubs anymore, we’re wearing bearskins. We’re supposed to be sophisticated guys.

Dorothy: [00:19:00] Well, Ronnie, that’s certainly a description. I don’t know. I don’t know that, that I agree with that, but I do hear what you’re saying about men. It’s hard, it’s hard for men to, to admit they’ve got something else going on. So again, if you have a question about male breast cancer, please, or you need to talk to Ronnie Pace, then contact The Rose.

Our, The website is therose. org. Let us know how he can get in touch with you and we’ll connect you because Ronnie is always ready to talk to anyone, male, female, about male breast cancer. He’s also a speaker. Now, I don’t know if you’re on the road as much as you used to be.

Ronnie: COVID kind of stopped all that.

Dorothy: Yeah, but he has some excellent videos, some excellent education videos. So, just let us know if you need to talk to him.

Ronnie: One thing we’re not talking about, Dorothy, if I could interject.

Dorothy: Sure.

Ronnie: The caregiver, the wife, she needs to really be on board with this thing, too. [00:20:00]

Dorothy: And what do you mean by that?

Ronnie: Because cancer is not a personal disease, it’s a family disease. The wife, the kids, everybody, your family, they’re all involved to some level. Because the dynamics of the system change.

Dorothy: Mm hmm.

Ronnie: The family’s not the same after breast cancer shows up on the door.

Dorothy: For male or female.

Ronnie: Correct.

Dorothy: Mm hmm.

Ronnie: So I think the wives need to be aware of that. They need to be a little more proactive.

I hate that word. Proactive and seeing that their husband is checked out. And if he is having a lump, don’t let him sit on it. Make him go do it. Women have ways to get their husband to do what they need to get done.

Dorothy: True.

Ronnie: Y’all, y’all are very persuasive.

Dorothy: True. And then, if there is a diagnosis, then that’s when the caregivers need to recognize they need care too. And they certainly have a different role to play in the life of their husband. What else would you tell them?

Ronnie: That you never give up.

Dorothy: [00:21:00] Ah. True. That’s true. Nine years out?

Ronnie: Nine years out, and uh, 2015, seven years on the second one.

Dorothy: That’s super. Hey.

Ronnie: So, and I think take, take a situation, like I said earlier, take a bad situation and turn it into something good, which is what I try to do with this deal.

Dorothy: You certainly have. So many people now know more about male breast cancer.

Ronnie: Well, thanks to you.

Dorothy: You, I have to tell the audience. I can never just say breast cancer in women without adding men ever since Ronnie came on our board. So again, Ronnie, thank you so much. Anything else you—

Ronnie: No, Dorothy, thank you. Hey, everybody listening, please just pay attention that this is a very important thing for men to understand and it won’t go away. It’s here to stay. Um, but it’s treatable just like women are. And probably our mortality rate is so high. It makes me concerned that. We’re losing men who are— Somebody said, well, the numbers are different. Well, you know, what’s different, a guy dying or a woman dying? It’s still somebody’s parent or sister, brother, [00:22:00] husband, wife. Because we have fewer numbers, I mean, we’re less important.

Dorothy: Right, right.

Ronnie: That’s what gets me is that, oh, 2,200 men, okay, well, we lose 500 men a year. That’s 500 families that are disrupted with the man gone.

Dorothy: So true.

Ronnie: So, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll quit preaching.

Dorothy: Okay. All right.

Ronnie: Thank you, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Certainly, certainly. Your last words of advice, never give up, share, and keep going. Ronnie, thank you again for being with us on Let’s Talk About Your Breast, and thank you for being so open and candid about your own breast cancer. So until we need you again, we’re going to, we’re going to stop right there and tell our our listeners, thank you for being with us today.

Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Freddie Cruz Creative Works and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose. org to learn more about our [00:23:00] organization. Subscribe to our podcast, share episodes with friends and join the conversation on social media using the #Let’sTalkAboutYourBreasts. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. And remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.