WHEN MAN GOES MUM

Many know of male breast cancer but rarely understand it. Though its prevalence is much lower than in women, it is on a gradual rise in India. Yet, there is silence

- By Pooja Biraia Jaiswal

ast year, on his way home from work, Raja Bhat sensed a lump on the side of his breast. "Somehow, out of nowhere, I sensed a lumpy feel on the side of my breast; it was about the size of a ball in ball bearings," he says. "I was perfectly healthy. I don't know where it came from. I had no pain or discomfort most times. There would be a burning sensation at times. I consulted a doctor at the government hospital in Srinagar."

It took the 33-year-old father of two a bit of time to explain the lump in his breast, as he kept looking for an alternative word for breast. Bhat was asked to get an FNAC (Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology) test to determine if the lump was malignant or benign. Malignant, said the report. But like most cancer patients, Bhat was in denial at first. He repeated the test twice, the second time at a private laboratory followed by an ultrasound, all of which confirmed the diagnosis.

Bhat recalls feeling broken, not just because he had cancer but more so because he had a malignant tumour in, what he refers to as, a "female organ". For several days, he kept the news largely to himself, confiding only in his wife. "I was devastated. It was almost the end for me," he tells THE WEEK over phone. "Those whom I did confide in looked at me as if I had turned into an alien. 'Cancer of what?' they would snigger. And people would tell me there was no hope."

Bhat, the sole breadwinner of his family, went into a shell, blaming himself and his "karma" for his stage two cancer. But then he met Dr Zahoor Sheikh, an oncologist at Srinagar's Paras Hospital, who assured him that he was nowhere close to dying. After meeting Sheikh, the first thing Bhat did was light a cigarette; he had stopped smoking post his diagnosis. It was a puff of relief-Sheikh's words had made him "less anxious and a little less mad at the world".