Dad’s double mastectomy after tumours kill father and uncle
WHEN Giles Cooper was told he had the same strain of breast cancer that had killed his father and uncle, he knew a double mastectomy was his best chance of survival.
Nearly three years on from the operation he is donating blood samples to a major British study aimed at working out what causes breast cancer in men.
Male breast cancer is extremely rare with only 390 men diagnosed each year compared to 55,000 women. Multiple cases in the same family are even rarer and the Coopers are thought to be the first in the world with three victims.
Mr Cooper, 56, became the youngest man in Britain to have a double mastectomy when he went under the knife at the Nuffield Hospital in Cheltenham in 2014. Weeks earlier the father of two had discovered a small lump which doctors diagnosed as grade 2 invasive cancer which had spread to both breasts.
The cancer had killed his 77-year-old father Stephen in 2004, and his uncle Christopher, Stephen’s brother, two years later at the same
‘I might not have noticed until it was too late’
age. The family history meant Mr Cooper was given regular check-ups and his cancer was detected in August 2014. Yesterday the chartered surveyor, who lives with his wife Nicola in Conderton, Gloucestershire, said: ‘I decided to have the double mastectomy because I was still relatively young and I didn’t want to be facing the same problem in five or ten years time.
‘The anaesthetist said it was the first time he’d put a man to sleep for this op in 20 years.’
After his operation Mr Cooper was given treatment to prevent the cancer returning. He is also being offered genetic testing to predict the likelihood of his children Freddie, 24, and Lottie, 22, developing the disease. And he is donating blood samples to the charity Breast Cancer Now which has spent more than £1.8million trying to discover what gene causes the disease in men.
The symptoms are the same as in women, but survival rates for men are lower at 72 per cent compared with 83 per cent. Mr Cooper said: ‘Some men don’t realise that it is possible to have breast cancer. If I hadn’t had that awareness from my father and uncle I probably wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late.
‘That’s why it is so important for men to check. If you see your wife or girlfriend routinely checking for lumps, then you should be too.’