New Swimwear Line Proves you Don’t need 2 breasts to Look Sexy

from The Huntington Post, Ryan Grenoble, posted 5/28/14:

 

“Who says you need two?”

That’s the question a group of breast cancer survivors and supporters are asking after founding “Monokini 2.0,” a social art project centered on swimwear designed for women who have had a mastectomy.

“We think that the current focus on a breast-reconstruction after mastectomy as the only way to a full life, is a breast-fixated way of seeing what a woman is,” the group wrote on Facebook. “We want to incite a positive self-image of breast-operated women by showing that you can be whole, beautiful and sexy even with just one breast or with no breasts at all.”

Monokini 2.0 features the work of seven fashion designers from Finland and the U.S., and a handful of models who have lost one or both breasts as a result of a mastectomy.

The project is the brainchild of Elina Halttunen, a breast cancer survivor. In a release, Halttunen explained the idea came from her own experiences after having had a breast removed:

“I do not want to hide, I do not want to stop swimming, I do not want to undergo extensive plastic surgery operations, and I do not want to be forced to use the uncomfortable prosthesis on the beach,” Halttunen said in a release, explaining that the idea came from her own experiences after having had a breast removed. “I want to feel as free and active as I did before my cancer, and I am pretty sure that there are others out there like me.”

 

To view some of the bathing suit line and the courageous and natural women who model them, visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/28/monokini-2-breast-cancer-swimwear_n_5405377.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Dense Breast Tissue = MRI

Actress Christina Applegate had a double mastectomy in 2008.  What follows is an article about how she discovered it.
“I lost my mind,” said Christina, 42, when asked how she reacted to her diagnosis. “I still sometimes lose my mind six years later. You look down and you have a daily reminder of everything that you’ve gone through.”

The double mastectomy saved her life after her breast cancer was detected by an MRI when she was 36 years old. “I started getting mammograms at 30, but my doctor said ‘the mammograms are not working for you because you’re too dense, and so we’re going to do an MRI.’ It was with that MRI that I found cancer, years before a mammogram would have.”

The former “Married with Children” star finds that as a mother to Sadie Grace, she worries that the foods we eat have something to do with women getting cancer so early on in life. “We have her on a completely plant-based diet,” she told ET’s Brooke Anderson. “It’s because I want her to have the best chance possible.”

Today, Christina’s foundation Right Action for Women gives free MRIs for high-risk women. “Were into almost 500 now,” said Christina. “We’ve spent over half a million dollars on MRIs, which is really incredible.”

If you have dense breast tissue and are at risk, and cannot afford an MRI, you may wish to visit her website which helps women like you.

Less invasive procedure destroyed all cancer cells when tumor was 1 centimeter or less.

Interesting new technique.  Here’s my concern…. when I was diagnosed with DCIS (ductal carcinoma in Situ), they identified one area.  Post mastectomy and upon analysis of the tissue removed, they found other DCIS cells not previously identified.

Had we simply ‘frozen’ the identified cells, I would have ended up having breast cancer again…either more DCIS or it might have progressed to another stage.  This is not a ‘sure thing’ yet, so proceed with caution.

“A tumor-freezing technique might offer a reasonable alternative to surgery for some women with early stage breast cancer, a preliminary study suggests.

The research, to be reported Wednesday at the American Society of Breast Surgeons annual meeting in Las Vegas, looked at a treatment called cryoablation. The approach, also called cryotherapy, uses substances such as liquid nitrogen or argon gas to freeze and destroy cancer cells.

Cryoablation is already an option for benign breast tumors called fibroadenomas, and for certain cancers — including some cases of skin, prostate and liver cancers. But researchers are just beginning to look into its potential for breast cancer.

The new study included 86 women with early stage invasive ductal breast cancer — which means the cancer had begun to invade the fatty tissue around the milk ducts.

The standard treatment is to surgically remove the cancer, usually followed by radiation. And it’s very effective; the five-year survival rate for stage 1 breast cancer is 100 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.

Still, some researchers want to find less invasive treatments — especially since breast cancer screening often finds tiny tumors, explained study author Dr. Rache Simmons.

Cryoablation fits the “less invasive” bill: A surgeon inserts a thin probe through a small incision in the skin, and then — guided by ultrasound — targets and freezes the tumor.

There are potential advantages of cryoablation over conventional surgery, according to Simmons, who is chief of breast surgery at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

For one, it can be done with local anesthesia, and it avoids the pain and hospital stay that comes with surgery. “Cryoablation lends itself very well to the outpatient setting,” Simmons said.

And afterward, she noted, there’s no surgical scar.

But cryoablation also has to work. To put it to a preliminary test, Simmons and her colleagues treated all of their study patients with the procedure, then looked at the immediate results.

Overall, the treatment was only moderately successful: It got rid of all evidence of the cancer in 69 percent of the women. The rest of the women still had some “residual” cancer.

However, Simmons said, the treatment was “100 percent effective” in a subset of women with the smallest tumors — about 1 centimeter or less. So it’s possible that for those women, cryoablation could be a new option.

An expert not involved in the study urged caution, however. “We already have a very good treatment” in conventional surgery, said Dr. Subhakar Mutyala, associate director of the Scott & White Cancer Institute in Temple, Texas.

He noted that even when women are not able to have major surgery, minimally invasive surgery — which uses small incisions — may be an option.

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• By Amy Norton, HealthDay News