There’s a short story in a small Wisconsin paper about a woman who, after 30 years of teaching nurses, had never heard of inflammatory breast cancer when she was diagnosed with it. She says it exactly right: “You need to tell your friends, if you have a rash and an itch on your boob that just won’t go away, then you need to get a mammogram.”
There is a rather depressing conversation this week on Cancer Compass: a woman’s doctor suspects inflammatory breast cancer, but the nurse won’t allow a biopsy for another three weeks, insisting that until there is a test result, there is nothing to worry about.
I’ll say it again: delays in diagnosing or treating IBC have a huge effect on the outcome of treatment. Just because you don’t know what’s happening doesn’t mean there is nothing to worry about. I really hope that in this woman’s case it turns out not to be IBC, but if it is, she needs to start treatment as soon as possible.