Your regular medical checkup is another
important means for early detection of cancer. Your doctor will examine larynx,
rectum and sigmoid colon, and usually your lungs. For women, additional
preventive measures are important.
Early breast and uterine cancers is readily
curable. Therefore, women should arrange with their doctors to have regular Pap
smears of the uterine cervix. This is a simple, painless test which requires
only a few minutes and involves only taking a smear through the vagina so cells
can be examined under the microscope.
It should be done regularly, as often as
your physician, or the gynecologist to whom he refers you, may suggest.
Regarding the breasts, we feel that most women should learn to examine them
once each month. If that makes unduly nervous, then they should set up a
schedule of regular examinations by the doctor.
Self-examination is a simple process. Immediately after the
menstrual period when the breasts are normally soft, look into a mirror and
raise both arms over your head so that the sides of the breasts are visible.
Study your breasts carefully, noting whether one looks higher than the other or
whether one seems larger than it was the previous month. Also, check for any
slight depressions or dimpling of the skin over the breast.
Next, using the right
hands on the left breast and vice versa, push the breast back gently against
your chest and feel for any small lumps. Then, feel the armpits for any
swelling. The best time to make this examination is in the morning. If you
decide that something may be wrong, you have all day to reach your doctor, if
only to get his reassurance. Not every lump in the breast means cancer. Many
lumps are harmless formations due to glandular functioning. Let your doctor
decide what they are.
Fortunately, he can now use a special type of x-ray study
for breast cancer, a technique called mammography. If cancer should
be diagnosed, your doctor will suggest whether surgery or radiation is the best
therapy. Most surgeons do cancer surgery. Only a few surgeons restrict
themselves to cancer work alone. In our largest cities there are hospitals that
specialize in treating cancer patients.
Let your doctor advice you. Surgery for
removal of the cancerous area may be followed by a course of x-ray or other
radiation to try to kill any cancer cells that might be lying beyond the area
the surgeon has excised.
