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It all started my senior year of high school. I was 17, sitting home watching TV, when I stretched and scratched across my chest, and felt this lump under my right nipple. I showed it to a doctor at a physical for sports a week later, and he said it was a calcium buildup from puberty that would dissipate, and nothing to worry about. When I had to get a checkup for college, with a different doctor, he said almost the same thing, verbatim.
I had no insurance at all during college at the University of Kansas, and during senior year I had started to get a discharge from my nipple if I were to squeeze it. I didn’t say anything to anybody, and I thought maybe this is the way of it “dissipating,” so no big deal. Finally, I got insurance and went for a physical, and the doctor was almost out the door when I stopped him, because he said, “Everything is great,” and they don’t do men’s bad exams. So I had to stop him and bring him back in and tell him, “Hey, I’ve had this lump for 7 years.” He touched it real quick and immediately set me up to get a sonogram.
I had to go to the women’s clinic, which is a lot of fun to walk into. You could tell the other men there were waiting for their significant other or mom to come out. And then the form — they’ve changed it since — but it had name, insurance, “when was your last menstrual cycle” and “are you pregnant?” You know — awkward.
Bret Miller with his surgeon. Miller is wearing the T-shirt his brother created for the Male Breast Cancer Coalition. (Photo courtesy of Bret Miller)
The nurse technician got the pictures we needed and called in the on-call doctor that was there. She did a triple take and called for an immediate mammogram. The more I look back, the more I think she knew immediately.
So they walked me down the hallway in my pink gown, they walked me up to the machine, and they pull my nipple and bad tissue into it. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world. They didn’t tell me anything at first, but I got set up with a general surgeon who said that he thought it was calcium buildup, but that based on the time that I’d had it he wanted to just take it out. They set me up for surgery, I get a lumpectomy, and am back home in two hours.
But I let it sink in for a minute. I thought, they got the lump out, so how bad could it be?
So it was barely stage 1, and the recommended treatment at the time was a double mastectomy, for preventative measures. They didn’t really know what to do with men, because there wasn’t much research, and there still isn’t much research. In my case, they just recommended what they do for women.
Bret with wife, Tasha, and their dog, who is also a cancer survivor. (Photo courtesy of Bret Miller)
[My parents and I] asked if he’d ever done a double mastectomy on a man, and he said no, that I would be his first. We were like, “We’d like to get a second opinion.” And we did, and he did say the same thing, but he said we could just do one side at first. He sent my case around to other top local doctors and those around the country. I was the second male in a study at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the morning of my surgery, a doctor from there called mine and said, “Do not treat men just like women. Do the single mastectomy and that’s all you have to do.”
My mastectomy was definitely an interesting day: I had Fox 4 and Channel 9 local news here in the surgery room videotaping. One of the local news reporters, who is a bad cancer survivor, got wind of my story. The surgeon told me that based on my age, if I’m willing to share my story, I could help many other people — many other men. So that’s when we started broadcasting it out. What I wasn’t told until a couple days after surgery was, because the length of time I had the tumor, the surgeon told my mom there was a possibility that it could be everywhere.
It wound up being just stage 1. But based on my oncotype report — which breaks down the tumor to a genomic level to provide a tailored treatment plan — it was recommended that I do chemo and a hormone pill like tamoxifen to prevent recurrence. I was like, I feel great, I feel healthy — let’s do the chemo and knock it down. I did four rounds of chemo, then about two months after I started hormone pills: first tamoxifen — but had crazy side effects of hot flashes — then anastrozole, and I was on that for five years. I’m now eight years clear.
Bret and Tasha on their Oct. 20 wedding day. “I was very open about being a bad cancer survivor from the start,” he says. (Photo courtesy of Bret Miller)
I formed the Male Breast Cancer Coalition in 2014, and my brother designed a T-shirt that had two handprints and the words, “Guys, don’t be afraid to touch yourself.”
We’re in Pinktober right now, and everything is pink and nothing is blue; not much is said about men. The American Cancer Society is the greatest, but the other organizations have just recently started adding “and men.” It’s all about women — and I get it; there are more women diagnosed and dying. But often by the time men are diagnosed, it’s metastatic. It’s because of men not thinking they can get it, and how some of them are like, “I don’t have bads, I have pecs.” Well, you still have bad tissue.
We need more doctors in a physical exam to do a bad exams on men, to take the time. We need to quit hearing the “it’s only 1 percent excuse,” as it’s 30 seconds of your time to do the exam. That’s not worth your time to do the exam that could save [your] life?
I was very open about being a bad cancer survivor from the start. I think I cracked a few jokes about having only one nipple. At the very beginning, I was self-conscious, but that quickly went away. If someone I met wasn’t comfortable with who I am and how I look, we weren’t meant to be.
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