IBC Support Blog

Different cancers grow at different rates. In many cases (prostate cancer is a good example), the rate of growth is slow enough that it may not be worth treating at all.

Younger people tend to get cancer less, but when they do, it is often much more aggressive. There isn’t a single explanation for this: faster-growing tumours show up earlier, and younger people have stronger immune systems that can take on slower cancer.

I’ve heard a lot of young women with inflammatory breast cancer say that they had trouble getting the tests they needed because they didn’t fit the statistical pattern of a breast cancer patient. A 25-year-old mother of 3 in Georgia is currently trying to get permission from her doctor to get a biopsy to rule out IBC for symptoms she has been experiencing for two months now, and is being refused because she is “too young”. It’s statistically improbable, but considering that both her mother and grandmother were diagnosed with breast cancer in their thirties, it’s hardly impossible. And for a young woman like her, if she does have IBC then starting treatment sooner can make all the difference.

The issue here is education. IBC is not like other kinds of breast cancer.  There isn’t always a lump, and to a family doctor who doesn’t know better, it can look like an infection. All too often, it isn’t properly diagnosed until several rounds of antibiotics too late.

The incidence of IBC is increasing, and women and doctors alike need to know about it. Not out of fear - quite the opposite - but because a little knowledge will save many lives.

List member Jessica Harris wrote a superb article for MD Junction called Too Young For Breast Cancer? Very relevant to IBC, since it often affects much younger women.