How does fear affect my decision about breast surgery?

Fear can adversely affect ones decision regarding any surgery. Fear can be both rational and irrational. Override your fear and discuss all realistic and true proven medical options available for your specific breast cancer. Find out the details of your type of cancer, including statistical information including survivability, rates of recurrence, specific cancer surgery, and need for adjuvant therapy (chemotherapy and radiation therapy).

Many women are very afraid of a cancer recurrence or radiation therapy, so they choose a double mastectomy even when only one breast has cancer.  Double mastectomies are sharply increasing (by 150 percent), especially among younger women, and this trend worries many experts. 

It’s ultimately your choice about breast surgery if you are a candidate for both.  “You don’t want a cookie-cutter approach to your surgery,” says advanced oncology nurse, Dr. Melissa Craft in Edmond, Oklahoma. Get a second opinion if you aren’t 200 percent convinced that the recommended surgery and surgeon are right for you.

Fear can keep someone from getting attention for a breast lump, first to see if it is cancerous or not, and often then removed. It should be the fear of surgery or the fear of finding out bad news. Since breast cancer is best treated when it is smallest, that fear can be life-threatening.

Counter-intuitively, fear that breast cancer can recur or happen in the other breast is motivating more women to ask for preventive surgery on their other breast. The fear of waiting for results of each subsequent mammogram, MRI or biopsy in someone with a strong family history of breast and or ovarian cancer or positive genetic testing needs to be addressed with your cancer care team to chart the best course of treatment.