Episode Overview

This is a Father's Day episode that I have been wanting to bring you for a while, and it is deeply personal for me. Back in 1993, I lost my brother to stage four metastatic testicular cancer just six months after his diagnosis. He was 32. That loss taught me something I have never forgotten. The cancers we do not talk about are often the ones that catch our loved ones off guard.

So when I came across an Instagram account called The Guy With Stage Four Breast Cancer, I knew I had to share his story with you. My guest this week is Jake Messier, a stage four metastatic male breast cancer advocate, speaker, and content creator who has become a leading voice for a disease that most people do not even know exists in men.

Jake walks us through his diagnosis, which began with a lump he found while putting on deodorant in early 2023 and did not get checked until months later, because like most men, it never occurred to him that breast cancer was even possible. We talk about how that delay may have shaped his stage four diagnosis, and why awareness alone can save lives.

We also get honest about the things that are rarely discussed. The isolation of being one man in a sea of pink. The brochures where no one looks like him. The support groups that turned him away. The surgical binder he was almost sent home without, simply because the only ones available were pink with flowers. And the harder truth underneath it all, that in 70 years of breast cancer research, there has been almost no study of how the disease behaves differently in men, which is part of why male breast cancer is roughly 30 percent more fatal than female breast cancer.

Jake shares the work he is building now, including the Male Breast Cancer Research Foundation and its three pillars: securing one percent of breast cancer funding for male-specific research, the male mouse project, and a male cell line registry. We also talk about hormone therapy, why no one can tell him if his treatment is right for his body, and the men's health questions so many of us carry for the people we love.

If you take one thing from this conversation, let it be this. Be aware of your partner's normal, so you can recognize the abnormal. And please, share this episode with the men in your life. Jake's story could be the reason one of them does not wait.

Resources Mentioned:

Work with Laura:
https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/health 

Download for iPhone: 

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kajabi/id1485646310

Download for Android: 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kajabi.kajabiapp&hl=en_US

Connect with Jake Messier, MBA:

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/theguywithstage4breastcancer/

Let’s Connect!
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Read the full transcript:

0:00
You're listening to Better Than Before Breast Cancer with the Breast Cancer Recovery Coach. I'm your host, Laura Lum Erm. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey friends, welcome to episode 467 of Better Than Before Breast Cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lum, or and I have a very special Father's Day episode for you with a very special guest today. I'm really excited about this, so I want to give you a little bit of history before I introduce my guest. You know, if you follow this podcast or you know my story, you know that back in 1993 my brother was diagnosed with very advanced stage four metastatic testicular cancer, and he lost his life to that disease six months after his diagnosis at the age of 32 I was 30 years old when my brother passed, and it was so beyond my comprehension that this could happen to such a young person, and I think, like most of us, when something that tragic hits our lives, and we've never even heard about it before, we look into it, and one of the statistics that I discovered was that this is the most common type of cancer that men from the age 15 to 35 get diagnosed with, or at least it was at that time when my brother was diagnosed, and yet I thought I've never even heard of this before. At that time, more awareness have been brought to testicular cancer since then, but I still think it needs a lot more attention. And so here I am, I'm scrolling through Instagram one day, and I come across this account that is at the guy with stage four breast cancer, and it's not the first time that I've heard about men having stage four breast cancer. In fact, there was an oncologist at a cancer center very close to my home that many of the mentors I work with at the Mentor Foundation that I'm a part of and volunteer for, they have worked with this oncologist, and some of my clients have worked with this oncologist, and he lost his life to breast cancer, and it's something that it's not talked about a lot. It's a small percentage of the total amount of breast cancer diagnosis that we see worldwide and in the United States, but it's growing, and that I think is reason for concern. Anybody who's getting a diagnosis of disease, we want to have as much information on the best ways to treat them as we possibly can. So I'm following this gentleman for a little while, and I love the way he talks. I love his mindset towards advocacy and the transparency with which he shares his story, and I reached out to him and asked him to share his story here on the Better Than Before Breast Cancer podcast. So I am very, very excited to introduce Jake Messier to you, because I hope by sharing his story we bring a little more awareness to the fact that the men in our lives that we love are not exempt from a diagnosis of this disease, and even though I see more and more attention brought to testicular cancer, how many men that you know that you love that are in your life actually check themselves for testicular lumps on a regular basis in their life, probably not many. How many do you know who would check themselves for any indication of breast cancer? Probably zero. But if we're seeing a rise in this disease in men, then it's definitely something that we want to bring awareness to and help them understand. So, I hope by hearing Jake's story that elevates awareness for you, and that you share it with the men that you love, because I believe his story can save someone's life. So, let's talk about Jake, and then let's jump right into this episode. Jake is a stage four metastatic male breast cancer advocate, speaker, and content creator who has become a leading voice in raising awareness about a disease that's often overlooked in men.

Laura Lummer 4:34
He was diagnosed in 2023 and he shares his journey through a social media platform, which I mentioned a minute ago, which is at the guy with stage four breast cancer, and I will link that in the show notes to this episode as well. But Jake is helping to break the stigma, encourage early detection, and support patients and families navigating cancer. He also works with national advocacy organizations. Patients to promote inclusive research, education, and mental health support for everyone with breast cancer, and I'm not going to go into more detail than that, because he does a fantastic job of it here in our discussion. So, I would love to. I'm very excited to introduce to you Jake Messier. Welcome to the Better Than Before Breast Cancer podcast. And thank you so much for joining me today. It's really an honor to have you here.

Speaker 1 5:27
Thank you for having me.

Laura Lummer 5:28
Yeah, my pleasure. So, you know what? I want to hear your story from you, and I want you to be able to share your story with everybody else. So, I'm just going to give you the reins and let you jump in.

Speaker 1 5:40
Sure. So, how hi everybody. I'm the guy with stage four breast cancer, right? It's a, it's an anomaly that I'm here, not just, you know, it's rare that guys get breast cancer, right, but it's even rare that somebody's out and talking about it, right. It's one of the issues with male breast cancer, right, is the stigma that goes along with it, so I was originally diagnosed in September of 2023 and if we go back, because that's part of this story, right? When I first found this lump, it was about five to six months before, I don't really know, it was in the March April time frame of 2023 and I was putting on deodorant, and I felt a lump, and I was like, well, that's weird, and that was the extent of me processing that. I was, I just went on with my day,

Laura Lummer 6:35
yeah,

Speaker 1 6:35
and going on with my day turned into going on to a month and going on to a couple months, and I got to about July, and I was like, this thing hasn't gone away, but I've got a primary care visit coming up in August, so I'll just add it to the list, you know, I'm 50, I think it was 52 at the time, I'm 52 I got a list of things that I'm going to remind you for my primary care appointment, and you know, I'll add this lump in there too, so I get to my primary care department and he's looking at everything and I finally get to this lum issue and he looks at it and he's like I don't, you know, I can't tell what it is from from this but you know he listed off about 10 things that it could be none of them were breast cancer but but in a you know I'm grateful that in that moment he said, well, let's send you for a mammogram anyway, just to rule that one out, and I was like,

Laura Lummer 7:26
what did you think when you heard that?

Speaker 1 7:28
Well, you know, a mammogram, like, wait, what are you talking about? Like, but I was like, well, okay, and that's the only way to rule this out, because we know it's not breast cancer, right? Let's rule that out. They sent me to get a mammogram, and I was there with the, you know, I get it done, and you know, trying to put as much, you know, material tissue into the machine and try to get it in there, and you know, and at that time, you know, now I'm almost three years into this, right, but at that time I'm looking at this, this scan, and I'm, I don't even know what I'm looking at at that point, right? I, you know, I at this point I've seen a million scans, and now I know what I'm looking at, but then I was like, I don't even know what I mean, and there was a mammogram tech sitting next to me, she had just done the mammogram, she has seen a million positives and a million negatives, right? She has seen all of it, right. She's been in this room, she's been in that room 40 times that day, right. And so I'm trying to figure it out, and I say, can you do I have cancer? And she's like, I can't tell you that. The radiologist is going to be in here in a couple minutes, and they'll be able to tell you, but what I will tell you is that your world is going to start moving incredibly fast and incredibly slow all at the exact same time, and nothing that anybody has said to me beyond that day has been probably closer to the truth, right. My, the past three years have seemed like they've gone by in three weeks, and they seem like they've taken 30 years, right. It is, it is crazy how time has compressed and expanded all at the same time, and so I was initially diagnosed with stage two invasive ductal carcinoma, sort of the run of the mill breast cancer. I was told that at the time, right? You got the, you've got the run of the mill breast cancer, you, you know, you go, you do your time in the chair, and you know, and then you come out, and a year later you're five, right? That's what I was told, and I was like, all right, well, I'll, I'll do that then, but you know that didn't come, you know, easily. There was, you know, I think when most people hear the word cancer, right, that's that's obviously this massive shock, and you don't know, you know, you have what happens in the movies with, you know, that you know a quiet room, and you know the sand in the, and you know, I didn't have any of that, because as soon as they said cancer, like you, they got to breast cancer, and I was like, wait, what are you talking about, like. That was so shocking that it almost made the cancer shock smaller, right? That the fact that I had breast cancer, like that's a weird thing. And I, I try to go back to, did I know that men could get breast cancer prior to me getting bred, and I don't think that I did. Right now, obviously I'm stage four, and I live it as a patient every day, but I also live it as an advocate, and you know, on social every day, so it's become my entire life, right? So obviously I do now, but I don't think I did prior to say September of 23 and so you know there's this weird emasculation that takes place, right? You, you're now thrust into this pink world, right? This, the whole pink ribbon, the pink, and look, the pink world has its drawbacks. The pink world has its benefits, right? It's the most researched, it's the most funded, it's the most well-known of all the cancers, right? It's, it's.. it gets the.. I'm a marketing exec from my previous, um, previous life, a brand guy and an advertising guy, and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 11:11
And the pink ribbon and the pink marketing campaign is one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the history of mankind, right? You can put it up against Ford and Pepsi and Disney and the pink ribbon, right? It's, it's right up there, right. It's a massive success. The problem is, is that I don't fit really into it, right. And a lot of men and a lot of women don't fit into it either, right. A lot of women are like, I don't like the pink thing, but

Laura Lummer 11:38
yeah,

Speaker 1 11:39
you know, when you are thrust into this pink world, and you don't know really which end is up. You're just trying to navigate, right? There's there's about 2000 breast cancer organizations in this country, stemming from the big ones like National Breast Cancer Foundation and Coleman and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, all the way down to small little local towns and city, you know, organizations that maybe offer one support group, but there's a lot of breast cancer organizations in this country that are primarily geared towards women, right? And there are three for men,

Laura Lummer 12:19
is that right? There's three, three, there's just three,

Speaker 1 12:23
so it's male breast cancer happens, it's male breast cancer global alliance, and it is his male breast cancer, and his has to do with the genetic component, right? So they're taking an already really small group and making anything even smaller group, but giving, you know, resources and education to guys that have the genetic code that that led to them having their breast cancer. Right, I don't have that genetic code. Mine's environmental. I got genetic tested, mine's environmental. Although I've been told by multiple people that you may have a genetic code, we just haven't found the genetic code for male breast cancer yet. Right, and that's that's a very big possibility, right.

Laura Lummer 13:03
Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 13:04
so at the time, you know, for right now I'm environmental, and but you get thrust into this world, right, and and and I think it's that is the same regardless of your gender, right? You get thrust into this breast cancer world, right, and there are, you know, but I think some of the differences is that, like, on the first time, the first meeting I'm having with my oncologist and my nurse navigator and my wife is there, and we're frantically trying to write down everything because we're, we're, you know, we're sure we're going to forget it, right, and, but you know, the packet, they're like, "Here's your packet, and they deliver it to me, right, and it's all the brochures and the and the reading materials and all this stuff, and I'm, and I'm opening it, and nobody looks like me, nobody, it's all she and her, and to be honest, it was all really just Caucasian women in their 70s, that's what it really was. It was really not representative, really, anybody except for older white women, and I was just like, like, yes, I can, like I said, I'm a marketing guy, so I can, I can read between the lines and read what applies to me, you know? If they're talking about ovaries, well, that section doesn't apply to me, right? When is it talking about other things, but you know it was at that point where I start realizing that, like, this isn't built for me, this isn't built for us, this isn't built for anybody really, other than women that fit that mold of that pink world, right, so that started in me, it, you know, it was, it was hard, right? It's you're battling cancer, which is hard enough, right, but then you're battling these demons, this social stigma that comes up, you know, you're dealing with a woman's disease. Right, you're dealing with waiting rooms that are pink and flowers, and you're dealing with, you know, every brochure and piece of reading material is she, her. Every time you go on a website, it's she, her, you know, when a, when an organization claims ending breast cancer for all, but then doesn't have any other pronouns other than she and her in it, it's like, well, that you're not really, and so you, that takes a significant psychological toll, and while I am obviously better now, I mean, I advocate this on a daily basis. I told you before, this, you're one of my three podcasts I'm doing today, right? They know I do this all the time. However, there was a three to six month long period where I was not well, mental health wise, right? And it wasn't just because of the cancer, right? And I think most cancer patients, when they're newly diagnosed, certainly have, you know, some downtime when it comes to your mental health, but this went further than that, right? I didn't belong anywhere, right? I didn't belong to the disease that I was now inheriting. I didn't belong to the support groups that were out there. I didn't belong to the research that was out there. I didn't belong anywhere, and so it's taking an already incredibly isolating experience.

Laura Lummer 16:20
Yeah,

Speaker 1 16:21
and then making it 10 fold, you know, or you know, to be honest, 100 fold, because the numbers are very clear. It's 99% of all breast cancer cases are women, 1% are men, and that's across the board. I just did a podcast yesterday with a group in Australia, right, and they're, they're heading up Australian breast cancer advocacy, and they said, out of, said, I, I know US numbers, right, about 2800 men in the US, which is about 1% of all breast cancer cases. 2800 men are going to get breast cancer this year in the US. I said, I don't know how many that is in Australia, but it was about 200 in Australia, and so that is, you know, across the board, so it is a rarity, right? But that's almost 3000 men, right? That's 3000 men a year that are going to, that are going to get this largely, and they don't know that they're going to, that they're even susceptible to it, right. And there's a lot of men that, that do get it, that, that have all kinds of pretty significant psychological issues with it, that belonging to this women's disease. I've even heard, as men choosing not to do treatment because they can't be part of that pink world, right? And, and you know that is a step too far, as far as I'm concerned. You should, you should go to treatment.

Laura Lummer 17:40
Yeah,

Speaker 1 17:40
but it also, you know, if I say this all the time, if I'm marching around being this leading spokesperson for male breast cancer around the country, then I'll work on the toxic masculinity of the guys that are in our thing, but it is a heck of a lot easier for you to paint your waiting room green or orange or yellow or some other color than pink, right. It's a lot easier for you to do that to make it more inclusive to everybody. When I came out of my mastectomy, right, the or nurses who were trying to be kind to me, they.. I'm not trying to, you know, say anything negative against them. They were trying to be kind to me, but I was coming out of my anesthesia, and I had my mastectomy, and they said, well, we didn't put a bind on you, no surgical bind that sort of holds everything in place, right? It's, you know, keeps your whole abdomen together after severe surgery like that. Like, we didn't put a surgical bind on you, because the only ones we had in the waiting room were pink and with flowers, and I was like,

Laura Lummer 18:37
oh my gosh,

Speaker 1 18:37
do you honestly think that I'm going to turn down a medical device, because there's pink and flowers, right, and, and, and I said, and by the way, you should probably have a couple neutral colors in here, but it doesn't matter, like, if that's all you can get, then, like, that's what you should put on me, but that's the level of, of my, I use the word microaggressions, and I'm not sure if that's even the right term, but it is. I mean, I walk, I go to Dana Farber now in Boston, right? That's where I, that's where I do my treatment. And Dana Farber has the only male breast cancer department in the world, it's the only one in the world,

Laura Lummer 19:14
right.

Speaker 1 19:15
And I, and I happen to go, my oncologist happens to be the head of the male breast cancer department, so in theory, my guy is the guy, right? Is he's the guy in male breast cancer, and he tells me all the time, he's like, "Jake, I don't know any, I don't know anything about male breast cancer. I treat you the exact same way I treat the women in my care, because nobody has ever paid any money in terms of research or funded any clinical trials or really anything for the differentiation between male and female breast cancer. It's never happened in the 70 years of research. Nobody has ever done it. In fact, I've talked to researchers, you know, 25 years in research, and they've never had a. Male mouse in their labs to even inject DNA, you know, to even play with male DNA, you know, it's, it's that pervasive, you know. When I walk onto Dana Farber's eighth floor, right, it's the Susan F. Smith for women's cancers, and I've jokingly made, you know, you know, it's talked to my oncologist about it, and the people, and they're like, yeah, and look again. I understand how philanthropy works. I understand that Susan F. Smith paid a lot of money to have her name on that, but it's factually incorrect, right? It's, it's not the floor for women's cancers, right? I belong there as much as anybody else, and so with those, you know, it's with all of that stuff, and and there are guys that can talk about these aggressions and micro aggressions much more passionately than me, you know, I was I was trying to go to an in-person support group, right, I've got tons of online friends, you know, and online support groups, but I was trying to go to a local, you know, sit in a room and commiserate with other people live and in person, right? I wanted to just go sit in a breast cancer support, so I called up a local place near me, and they happen to have a breast cancer support group and a metastatic breast cancer support group, and I'm not sure. Do you know why that? Do you know why organizations do that? It's very actually

Laura Lummer 21:27
airs people.

Speaker 1 21:29
It does like we are the worst nightmare for stages zero through three, right? And so when we, when we sit in these, in these meetings with regular old breast cancer patients, right? They get really nervous and anxious around us because we represent their worst nightmare, right. And so, oftentimes we're, you know, there's the breast cancer support group, and then there's the metastatic breast cancer support group. I asked, I said I'd love to join either one or both, probably, and I was told that I couldn't based on my gender, and this is not, this is not, this is not rare. You couldn't,

Laura Lummer 22:07
you're not allowed.

Speaker 1 22:09
I was not allowed, because I was told these women needed safe spaces to talk about things, and I, I get that, and I'm empathetic to women needing safe spaces, but I'm still a breast cancer patient, right? I still have significant things that are going on with my life that are affected by breast cancer, and I just, you know, and you know, they were like, well, you know, some people are gonna be talking about intimacy issues, and I'm like, okay, well, that's fine, I am too, these are things that I want to talk about, and yeah, and so, like, that's the level, and to be honest, I've been told to my face, you know, there's about.. I would guess, and talking to a lot of other guys in breast cancer, there's between 20 and 25% of women that are in breast cancer, right, whether they work in it or whether they are a patient or whether they're an advocate that you know they're somehow aligned or in breast cancer, right? There's about 20% of those women that do not want men involved that that have said I've been told to my face, Jake, men have enough voice in this world and you're not taking mine away from me. I am not trying to take yours away, I'm just trying to make my little voice, my little 1% voice heard, right? But it is pervasive to get

Laura Lummer 23:27
the support you deserve, you know, that's that's what

Speaker 1 23:30
I'm thinking, right? Yeah, but, but the beauty of that is that there's, you know, there's 2000 organizations out there, and so I don't beg anybody to service me. me, right? No,

Laura Lummer 23:43
yeah,

Speaker 1 23:44
you don't want to play great. There's, there's, there's somebody else that will, and, and there are a lot of organizations and people that, that are welcoming, and, and are a resource to us men, and that kind of a thing, but like all of those things lead to pretty significant mental health stuff that you don't belong in this disease, it's very similar to women in the colorectal space, right, women, not that's 95% to 5% women, you know, and so a lot of my, my fans on social media are not just breast cancer patients, they're like they're rare disease people, and they're like, "Oh, you are finally somebody's finally saying what we have been saying for all along. And, and so I talked to a lot of rare disease people. I, you know, appendix cancer.. I didn't even know appendix cancer was a thing. Did you? I mean, I didn't either. The same number of guys that get breast cancer every year is the same number of people that will get appendix cancer every year, but because we get sucked up into that big pink umbrella, we just.. and that's why I said there's benefits here, right? If I was just another rare disease that really nobody cared about, because there wasn't. Enough people and enough funding to make it worthwhile for the pharmaceutical companies to pay attention to you, all those things, right? But I got breast cancer, right, that's the biggest and the best and the shiniest and the pinkest and all the things, right. So yeah, I get to live in that pink umbrella, and it affords me the opportunity to walk around here, because if I had appendix cancer, if I was the guy with appendix cancer, you'd be like, well, I'm probably not gonna have them on my show, right, but I'm this unicorn, and so I decided to use that platform in a way to not only help educate men that they can get breast cancer, but women as well, just human beings, right? That's sort of my mantra as of late, which is there's so many men that are like, ah, I don't have breasts, or I can't get breast cancer, all these things, and I'm like, fine. If you don't want to admit that you have breast, there's fine if you're a human mammal and you have this region of your body intact, then yeah, you can get, you can get breast cancer, like that's, yeah, and I promise I won't call them breasts, and for all the sensitive guys in the room, and all these other things, but yeah, I mean, that's that's at the end of the day, that's what I'm doing, is just making sure that the 70 ish years that women have been doing this, you know, in the 1950s and 60s, they were like, hey, breast cancer is a thing, and people were like, what, what are you talking about, and now me and a bunch of other, me and a handful of other guys are marching around saying, hey, male breast cancer is a thing, and people are like, wait, what, what are you talking about, and so, but we get to piggyback on the success of what we, I have a track record, and a really successful track record of what women are doing, and how women are fundraising, and research, and all these other things, it's not going to take us 70 years to get there, right, but there's still that general reaction, which is, yeah, I don't, I didn't know that, and, and, and a lot of times men sort of turn a blind eye to it, it's different than prostate cancer, it's different than than other things, they're like, what, that, that, that's a woman's thing, and I can't get it. Well,

Laura Lummer 27:01
yeah,

Speaker 1 27:01
there's where you're wrong.

Laura Lummer 27:03
Yeah, and I also think that I don't know, we just don't put that as much attention in men's health overall, right? Things will happen with my husband, and I'm like, babe, you've got to get to the doctor, and he's like, yeah, I have an appointment in three months, and I'm like, no, you need to get to a doctor, something is wrong, right, and just to continue to emphasize that, but there's this mentality of, I've got it, or why would, like you said, why would a man who found a lum think they have breast cancer, right, unless you've been told that somewhere

Speaker 1 27:37
along the time, right, unless you've been told somewhere along the way that that you, that men can get breast cancer, you're not going to ever think that. Please continue with your brother. I want to hear that.

Laura Lummer 27:47
Oh, my, my brother passed away from testicular cancer, and you know, I had no idea, because he was 32 years old at the time. I had no idea that that was the most common form of cancer in men from 15 to 35 years old, never had even heard of it, and after you know all that, of course, Lance Armstrong brought more awareness to testicular cancer, but I still don't really hear that much about it, and I just think this is a cancer that can kill our young men. Why isn't there more awareness around this? So I think all across, and you said a couple of times micro aggressions, and I think about it's funny. So, from a woman's perspective, I hear your story about the binder and the pink and the flowers. I'm thinking that they're thinking we want to respect your male dignity, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's what

Speaker 1 28:40
those nurses were thinking, right? They weren't, yeah. And that's why I'm not like all these nurses. I'm like, no, they were trying to look out for me, right?

Laura Lummer 28:47
Right, which is wild, because, as you said, you needed a medical device, and you should have had it, right? So, like, my question is this: 3000 men a year, or even more than that, maybe globally. We don't know, that's a lot of men, and that's

Speaker 1 29:02
definitely more. It's 2800 in the US alone. So, yeah, it's definitely more than 3000 global.

Laura Lummer 29:07
Yeah, so is this - are we seeing a rise in male breast cancer? And if so, like, what's going on? How long has it been increasing?

Speaker 1 29:18
There, there is.. there's a, there's a great article that came out last fall on Breast cancer.org to give them a plug, because they, their headlines and male breast cancer is on the rise, right? And I was like, that's shocking, so let me go in there, and statistically, yes, it is, but when you're talking about global numbers of breast cancer, right, breast cancer, right, and then you're talking about 1% of that, it is an incredibly small number, right, as well as there are men that don't ever get to be diagnosed, right, there are men that. You know, the average age of a, of a male with breast cancer is about 75 where they're diagnosed.

Laura Lummer 30:08
Yeah, and so it

Speaker 1 30:08
is a lot more fatal. It's about 30% more fatal than than female breast cancer, lack of screening, lack of all the things, right? The things that lead into.. I will. There is no doubt in my mind that late screening, this social stigma, these, these things that make breast cancer that much harder for men than it is for women. You know, women with breast cancer go, how could this possibly be harder? Well, if one in eight women are good, I know more than eight women in my life, right? One of one in eight women are going to get breast cancer in their lives, right? I look at that and say that's a big, huge, scary number. Where men are 728 right? It's a much different thing. There is, there is no doubt in my mind that education and advocacy can drop that 30% number considerably, right? And that comes from the guys listening to your podcast, the women that are listening to this podcast, that then go and tell their guys, right? It's one I sort of make this tongue in cheek in on my social every once in a while, which is, hey ladies, you may be touching your man's chest more than he is during happy time, or whatever else you want to be, you know, whatever. If you feel a lump, then you need to tell, like, tell somebody, right? Because, because you're right, guys, you know, as a whole, are are not going to take care of themselves health wise as much as women, and so you know, and the other point here is that when it comes to breast health, particularly finding lumps and that kind of thing, right, women are taught, you know, in sixth grade health class, or whenever that happens, whenever that, whenever that health class happens, right, that if you find a lump, you tell somebody, right, doesn't matter if it's a parent or a teacher or a trusted whatever, that if you tell an adult, right, men are never taught that, boys are never taught that, you know, would I love to see a wholesale change in the curriculum of health class, so that male breast cancer is included. I would love that. It's, it's barely covered in medical school, other than, you know, let's do the breast cancer chapter, and, oh yeah, and guys can get it too. And if you were too hungover, or, you know, whatever, and that day in medical school, and you missed it, I can't tell you the number of. there have been a number of people with RNs and MDs next to their name that have said to me and my wife, oh, guys can't get breast cancer, and we're like, what are you, you're, you're, you're in this profession, my, it's

Laura Lummer 32:56
amazing,

Speaker 1 32:56
right? My wife went for her mammogram, and she is incredibly, you know, she tells everybody, like, I'm very sensitive to this, because my husband has breast cancer, so I want to make sure she's incredibly sensitive to it, and the I don't know if it was a mammogram tech, I don't know if it was a nurse, I don't know who it is, but the woman running the desk at the mammogram center told her that men couldn't get breast cancer,

Laura Lummer 33:19
oh my god,

Speaker 1 33:21
and so, so is

Laura Lummer 33:23
that even happening in 2026

Speaker 1 33:27
Jeez, right? It's, it's, it's, it's crazy. I mean, again, my primary care physician, who, look, I mean, I go, I go to him for my eczema lotion, and my, you know, I don't go to him for anything, because he has told me, look, Jake, you by far know more about male breast cancer than I do, like by far he goes, and so, and, and so he takes my lead on a lot. Again, I'm only seeing him for other things, right? My oncology team at Dana Farber handles everything related to all this, right, but yeah, I, the moment that there stops being so much stigma around this is the moment that we start to see that 30% start to drop, that male breast cancer is not 30% more fatal, because all it comes down to is screenings, mammograms, and a healthy relationship with the cancer itself, with the disease itself, right, and once those things start to get fixed, once there's not the head turn and the snap on weight guys can get breast cancer, once that happens, then you're going to start to see real change, you know? Where numbers drop, like they have for women, right? You know, breast cancer is not the fatal disease that it once was, right? Even out of stage four. So, you know, I.. I.. I'm hopeful that you know. Me marching around, you know, my goal is to reach 30 people a day. That was the goal I set when I first started my social, was to reach 30 people a day, and you know, through my social, I know I'm reaching a lot more than that. You know, that was my goal initially, but you know, gonna stay humble with your goals, right? I, you know, and I know I reach a lot more than 30 people a day. I had a post yesterday that, that is, that 400,000 views and climbing, right? It's incredibly, so it's, it's, it's viral for the cancer world, right. I understand having 50,000 followers on social media does not an influencer make. I understand that. Again, I worked in marketing and social media for a long time,

Laura Lummer 35:40
but in our world it does.

Speaker 1 35:42
In the cancer world, it's a huge number. In the male breast cancer world, it's unfathomable, right? And because of that, that opens up doors, and that's where I'm starting to see things now, right. I'm starting, you know, when I, when you have a big follower count, and you can talk well on camera, and you can be a good representative, organizations reach out to you, and that's what happened, like Susan G. Komen reached out to me, which is, you know, the biggest, and you know, one of the largest, you know, charities in the, in the country, certainly in breast cancer, and we started talking about my, my relationship with breast cancer organizations, and my relationship with breast cancer and all these things, where they just recently asked me and appointed me. I went through an interview process and applications and all these other things to join their metastatic breast cancer steering committee, and as far as we know, I'm the first guy to ever join a common board, right. Wow, that's significant. There's been, there's been male doctors there, there's been male funders there, male donors there, but in terms of a male patient, and that's why I think this conversation over the past couple years is changing, right. Organizations like Komen is not just putting me on a board. Yesterday, I recorded a podcast with two other male breast cancer bunnies, right, two friends of mine,

Laura Lummer 37:05
awesome.

Speaker 1 37:06
And for Coleman, Coleman wanted to do that, so for Men's Health Month, Coleman is going to be putting out this thing and running several campaigns, and I've made the made the plea look, October is really busy, like we're not going to get into October, right? October is a really busy month, maybe, maybe once in a while, but I said, "What are you all you guys doing in June? Nobody's doing anything in June, so why not let these breast cancer orgs have another month? Why not give them June as men's health month and give them male breast cancer awareness during the month of June, when obviously not a lot of it's happening anyway with these breast cancer orgs, other than starting to plan for October, so why not let it happen? And so that's sort of what I've been, I've been beating this drum the past couple weeks about. Why not make June male breast cancer awareness week, or month, or day, or whatever you want to designate it as. Um, because right now we have one in October, and it's completely overshadowed, right? Why not? Yeah, why not pop it out? So, anyway, yeah, that's all of these little things I think matter for the population of one end with breast cancer in this country, right? I think that's the most important thing, they don't see themselves represented in anywhere, right? You know, organizations will come to me and they say, "Hey, can you help us de-gender our website, right? Because, again, I had this marketing background, right, and I'm going through, and I'm like, "Listen, at the end of the day, I'm not doing anything magical here, you know. Run your copy through Chat GPT and have it change every she and her to a day or a patient or, you know, some other ungendered word, and that will work. The National Breast Cancer Foundation came to me and asked me to help them out with that, and it was, you know, within three weeks they had redone their entire brochure, redone the entire website. It was, they wanted to make significant change, and they did. So that is

Laura Lummer 39:08
wonderful.

Speaker 2 39:09
Yeah, so hopefully we're starting to see this change.

Laura Lummer 39:12
Yeah. Do you think, Jake, that the awareness that you're bringing, like I love that these foundations are responding to you, but when it comes to research, because there's got to be a huge difference between male breast cancer and female breast cancer, especially the hormone components. I mean, they don't know, and I don't mean to cut you off, but they have no idea. That's fine. I'm

Speaker 1 39:35
on endocrine therapy, right? I'm on Tamoxifen and Virginia, and my doctor, again, the guy that is the head of male breast cancer at Dana Farber, which is the only male breast cancer department in the world, he tells me all the time, "Jake, I'm putting you on this hormone therapy, I have no idea if this is the best way to treat you.

Laura Lummer 39:52
Yeah, I

Speaker 1 39:52
have no idea if tamping down or blocking the estrogen in your body is the best way to do this. It works on my female patients. So I'm going to do it over here, but I have no research or data to back that up.

Laura Lummer 40:05
Yeah, so in essence, guinea

Speaker 2 40:06
pigs,

Laura Lummer 40:07
yeah, is yeah, you are right. So, first of all, as we know, people with metastatic disease, it's been my experience that there's a lot of dismissiveness, as far as, well, we don't do that for people with meds, because they just think we're going to die anyway, right? Why waste the

Speaker 1 40:23
resources, right? Yeah, yeah,

Laura Lummer 40:25
exactly. Why waste it on you? You're not going to be around for long. So there's that part, which is awful. And then it.. so, in your opinion, is it a numbers game, meaning before we see any significant amount of money going into researching male breast cancer. Do we have to lose a lot more men? I mean, is it awareness or is it neighbors?

Speaker 1 40:45
When you talk about, you know, when you talk about pharmaceutical companies, and you talk about clinical trials, and I don't know, I would, I would hate the optimist in me, the humanist in me would like to think that any life is worth saving, right.

Laura Lummer 41:04
Absolutely,

Speaker 1 41:05
but I also know that money makes the world go round, right. And if there's not a core, if there's not a core need, then I don't know if that actually happens. But here's, here's where I, I'm going to contradict myself a little bit, because one of the biggest funders of breast cancer research is the Department of Defense. They have a massive grant, it's a huge.. I don't know how much money it is, but it is a.. it's one of the biggest funders, and National Breast cancer coalition and several other organizations go to them, and they'll get a pile of money to do research, or whatever. So, it's this, and every year a bunch of advocates, primarily from National Breast Cancer Coalition, head to DC, because they have to defend why breast cancer research is important to Congress, right, and why they should fund this, and I have said on numerous occasions that the majority of Congress is old white men, right, that's what that's what the majority of Congress is, right, if old, if those old white men knew that they could get breast cancer, and that it was much more aggressive at the age of 70 plus, that most of them are. Do you think there would be as much questioning about breast cancer funding if they, if all of those men on those congressional hearings knew that it wasn't just a woman's disease, right? If it was, if it could affect them, and that's unfortunately, that's unfortunately where I see real change. You brought up a little while ago a celebrity, and I can't remember who you brought up, but like I think about like the young man from Dawson's Creek, who just passed away from colorectal cancer. Right, yeah, he just passed away, and that kind of exposure brought tons of funding, tons of research dollars, son. And so, unfortunately, I can march around as Jake nobody and talked about male breast cancer, right, and that's what I do, right, I'm, you know, and I go from 50,000 to 51,000 to 52,000 you know, and it's gonna like, but what, what's gonna matter is when somebody of significance, fortunately, you know, I'm not significant enough, but somebody of significance coming down with this disease, and them forwarding that mission,

Laura Lummer 43:51
right?

Speaker 1 43:51
You know, there's already been a couple celebrities that have male breast cancer, right?

Laura Lummer 43:57
Must be Richard

Speaker 1 43:58
Rowntree, who played Shaft back in the 70s, he came down with breast cancer. Peter Chris, the drummer from Kiss, he had male breast cancer. Right,

Laura Lummer 44:10
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 44:11
And then probably the most famous one, and the person who probably could have the most amount of influence if he, if he chose to, is Beyonce's father. Beyonce's father has male breast cancer, and, and, and, and all of, I mean, Richard Roundtree has been passed for decades now, but, like, they don't take advantage of their celebrity status, you know, Beyonce can start up very easily a male breast cancer foundation, and a lot of people would see that, a lot of people would see that, and I, and I, I get frustrated when, when I'm sitting here, and you know, creating content on my little phone, and you know to. Just, you know, all these things all day long, just trying to get the word out there. When people that have a built-in audience of millions could, could make some real change, and it doesn't require a ton of effort here, right? Right now, people are like, well, what could you.. you know, what are you gonna do with, you know, $100,000 for research dollars? I'm like, well, when you're starting off with zero, when you have literally nothing, yeah, $100,000 for breast cancer research isn't gonna go very far, right?

Laura Lummer 45:37
Right, $100,000

Speaker 1 45:38
in male breast cancer research, like when you have zero, that's a lot of money, and male, as I mentioned before, male mice to drop into labs, they're about 150 bucks a piece, so $100,000 buys a whole lot of male mice, and I understand that you can't just drop male mice into a lab that it would require all kinds of animals, husbandry things, and everything else. I get that, but if an organization is running a $10 million clinical trial, and it only has female DNA, and it only has female mice, and it only has these things, then can I give you $5,000 worth of male mice, so that as you're injecting everybody, you just happen to inject one over here, so that we get some ancillary data. We're not looking for a big wholesale clinical trial, just some ant. Did it? Did the male mouse react in the exact way that the females did? I mean, I don't know, and you don't know either. Like, that's the problem. Nobody knows, and so that's where I think that it needs to go, is is a celebrity somebody with some followers needs to get this, because that's what's going to draw the attention for people to actually put some money in. Is

Laura Lummer 46:55
that on your checklist to reach out to Beyonce's people and say, "Hey, would you be open to this? I mean, I know a lot

Speaker 1 47:02
of people, I know a lot of people that have, and I don't think that they're ready to do it. I know, I know people that have reached out to Matthew, and Matthew Knowles is his name, and, and there, there hasn't been a lot. I would love to see Matthew Knowles speaking at, you know, a major at the Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio. I would love, like, that's and, and you know, Beyonce sitting next to him, just showing her support. How much crowd would that gather? Right, is just Beyonce sitting next to him. And so that's when I started

Laura Lummer 47:40
campaigning on your Instagram, and be like, all my 50,000 followers, start messaging Beyonce. Everybody say, Beyonce, we need your help, come on, send your dad over. Yeah, yeah, I gotta ask you this question, because you talked to me about a mastectomy, and in my mind I'm working through this. How is a mastectomy different? I mean, obviously, a female is going to have more breast

Speaker 1 48:07
tissue, so is

Laura Lummer 48:07
it more invasive for a male? Does it have to go into the muscle more? Did it? No, it was one of the first questions

Speaker 1 48:13
I asked. One of the first questions I asked was, is it going to affect my pec or anything like that? No, it's, you know, the breast, right? If they're cutting it off at the at the at the chest wall, right at the skin level,

Laura Lummer 48:29
yeah,

Speaker 1 48:29
that's in essence what they're doing. They're basically, I mean, my scar is a bit concave, but I don't think it's any more concave. I've seen a million mastectomy scars on women. Yeah,

Laura Lummer 48:38
yeah,

Speaker 1 48:39
that's a weird thing. When you go to conferences, everybody's just willing to lift up their shirts. Yeah, first time I went to a conference, I'm like, why are all these.. I mean, people that have, you know, just mastectomy scars, or people that have reconstruction but no nipple, or people that have full recon, they're like just burning up their shirts, and like, oh yeah, let me see yours, let me say, and I'm like, oh, it's like, what is happening? Because, again, when I go to breast cancer conferences, there's 300 women and me, right? Yeah, or 500 women and me, or, you know, in this one training I went to, it was 105 women and me, right? And that was almost, you know, and when I got up to do my little presentation again, and said, this is indicative of where I sit, right, it's 100 of you,

Laura Lummer 49:24
yeah,

Speaker 1 49:24
and you all have each other, and you are this collective of women, and this, you know, strong, powerful, you know, all these things, and for the most part, we don't belong in those, and that, and that can be frustrating,

Laura Lummer 49:38
and they probably think you're the supportive spouse when they see you in a crowd, right?

Speaker 1 49:42
My God, when I mean, I can't tell you the number of times that we've been sitting in the Dana Farber waiting room, where somebody will come out and ask my wife, nope, it's me, or whatever. Yeah, I mean, we get, we get confused all the time, like, you know, we were in somebody, you know, somebody asked my wife the. Day in the waiting room, like, oh, how long have you been in treatment? Because you look fantastic. She's like, it's.. it was, you know, it happens all the time.

Laura Lummer 50:07
Yeah, and you know, I think about it too. One of the things that I see gaining more awareness as my husband ages.. my husband is 69 but since his mid 50s, he and many, many of his friends have.. it's not really official andro pause, but you know they start losing energy and more sleep and prostate enlargement and all this, and a lot of the doctors turn to testosterone treatment and testosterone injections, and you know, with I'm very well trained in metabolic sciences, and I think, whoa, that's a lot of testosterone, and that's going to aromatize into estrogen if you're not using it. How are they? Because the dosages to me, when I see this happening, not being a doctor, if I'm like, well, how do they know that's not too much? Like, how do they know your body is not using all of that, right? And then it scares me for exactly this reason, because I think if your estrogen is so high as a man and it's aromatizing because of a testosterone treatment, does that increase your risk of breast cancer? And I guess that's another question that nobody knows the answer to, that

Speaker 1 51:16
nobody knows the answer to, because nobody has ever studied it, and that's like I got asked on podcasts, well, what do you think about this, and I'm like, I have no idea, and neither does anybody else, like, you know, and people are always like, wait a minute, how do you not know, and I'm like, it's not just me who doesn't know, I mean, Dana Farber researchers don't know, like everybody doesn't know, and, and that just goes to the lack of awareness, which goes to lack of funding, which goes to the lack of research, right, which goes to the lack of treatment options, right. That's the last,

Speaker 3 51:48
it's the last line, right. I get treated in the same way that every other woman gets treated, and nobody can tell me that that's the right way to get treated. Yeah, and this is, we hear this through the medical system from women saying, well, it's always studies, and all these

Laura Lummer 52:08
things have always been done on men, they don't know how it's done on women, exactly

Speaker 1 52:13
true, and that's why I don't like, I don't, I mean, I understand that as a male, as a 55 year old cisgendered white male talking about diversity issues, and talking about feeling, you know, you know, encumbered all of these things, right? But it's, it's the truth, right? It doesn't matter in this case, it doesn't matter what any other thing is, other than your gender, right? It doesn't matter about race or, you know, anything else. And so, yeah, I mean, it, it is, it is very true that that we, we are forgotten at the end of the day.

Laura Lummer 52:57
Yeah, and it seems like your solution seems like it would work across the board, like when you're doing an animal study, have male and female animals that you're studying. How hard could that be? My, my,

Speaker 1 53:07
my solution has really turned into, I would like to see 1% of all breast cancer funding be turned into male breast cancer specific funding,

Laura Lummer 53:21
yeah. If you give us, if you

Speaker 1 53:23
give, if you give a million dollars to breast cancer funding, then I only want 10,000 and that's, and, and like, and I've thought about, anyway, I've done this sales pitch before, right? If you're giving a million dollars and I'm only either asking for an additional 10,000 or take, you know, 990,000 and give me 10, right? Yeah, you're going to be a real jackass to say no to that, right? Like, the 1% the 1% number is so infinitesimal that, like, you really got to think hard to be a jerk to turn that down, right? So that's what I want, is 1% of funding, right, but if you talk about how much research goes into breast cancer funding every year, 1% of that number can be a pretty sizable number, and so, but that's all I'm looking for, right. I'm, we are not equitable, I'm not looking for 50% because we're 50% of, no, we are 1% of the problem, so we deserve to be honest, 1% of the solution,

Laura Lummer 54:23
absolutely. And you know, why not make sure that we're looking at that 1% before it becomes 2% or 3% or 5% God forbid, you know? Right. Yeah, because we know that even as a female with breast cancer, you know, we're told it's like less than 3% is because of Braca genes, right? Right. Then there's another couple percentage that's familial genes that have been identified, but even those have metabolic and environmental drivers. Everybody with Braca is going to get breast cancer, so we know that the environmental influence is just huge on every. Buddy across the board, but then there's always going to be a genetic component behind that as well, that's going to be and hormonal, which is so important to understand for different genders. So, tell us about your foundation, what you're doing, and like what's the top three things that are most important to you in your foundation.

Speaker 1 55:20
Well, I am in the process now, and you know, and who knows if it will turn into something that I create or something that gets, you know, absorbed into a much larger organization. It doesn't matter to me as long as it gets done right, and so it's really focusing on this 1% right now. It's the Male Breast Cancer Research Foundation again that may get brought into another organization, but it really focuses on on three legs of the stool, right? It's fundraising, right? It's just, you know, looking for that 1% right? And it's marching around the country to the funders that already fund breast cancer research and asking for that 1% That's that's the first part. The second part I've already talked to you about, which is the male mouse project. There's no male mice in labs, right? And I talked to several researchers that are like, yeah, that's one of the biggest problems. He goes, you could come to me with a million dollars, I can't do anything with it, I don't have any male mice to even inject DNA it. And then the last line, which is the male cell line registry, and this is a little bit different, because if you want to, if you want to do research, and you're looking for a certain demographic of a male breast cancer, I'm sorry, of a breast cancer patient, right, and I need a 40 year old mother who's Hispanic and who has never smoked, and I can go and get that cell line right, or if I want a 63 year old Caucasian woman that smoked her entire life but never had kids, I can go get that particular demographic. There's about 700 breast cancer cell lines available for researchers. Do you know what they have? None of

Laura Lummer 57:00
all the kids, yeah. yeah

Speaker 1 57:03
none, and so the last leg of this stool will be starting up the male breast cancer cell line registry. I'll be the first person to go in there and donate my DNA to see if that will help in some way, right? But those are the three things again we can raise. I could raise $50 million if there's no male mice and there's no male DNA to work with, then it doesn't matter. You have to have the resources to do to combine with the money to make real progress. And so that's our first thing, is that we're trying to get the male mouse project again, and the male breast cancer cell line registry, those are those are two really important parts to making sure that the money is effective, right, that's that's what you want, you don't want to just put it towards breast cancer research, there's enough money going towards breast cancer research, you need it going specifically for either the biological differences between male and female breast cancer, or the medicinal, right? You know, you gotta, you gotta talk, and then the last part about the, the foundation, which I think is critically important, which goes back to the very beginning, and the question you asked me is 30% of the funding will go towards the social stigma, it'll go towards research into how to make this better for men, to the point where then we can take those findings and bring them over to those three organizations that that cater to and say, hey, this is what we found, this is what we found, that men need to not feel as isolated, and so hopefully they can take that research and turn it into programming, right, like a good nonprofit does, right? But that's that's in essence, because you can fix male breast cancer all you want from a biological perspective. If you don't fix the social part,

Laura Lummer 58:58
yeah,

Speaker 1 58:58
the real problems really never go away.

Laura Lummer 59:01
Yeah, I could totally see that. So, if you could leave any listener with any piece of advice for the men in her life that are mostly women listening to this podcast, what would you recommend?

Speaker 1 59:17
Be aware of your partner's normal, right? Be aware what their chest looks like when it's normal, right? A lot of times, you know, my wife is looking at, you know, I'm only looking at my chest in the mirror, right? My wife is looking at my chest more than I am, right, but like being aware of your normal, so that when something is abnormal, you know, and you know there's, there's all kinds of, there's five or six ways that you could tell, one's a lump, right, one's dimpled skin, one's an inverted nipple, there's a couple different things that you can look for, but if you don't know what your normal is, then you're never going to find your abnormal, so I think that's the and then. Again, if you've listened to this entire podcast, right, if you're, if you're at the 50 minute mark, or wherever we're at, right, then you now know that guys can get breast cancer, and I think that's the most important thing, right, is just the basic knowledge, so that a guy doesn't wait the six months, right, would I have progressed to stage four, had I not had these delays in both my initial diagnosis, and then my treatment, would I have progressed to stage four? I don't know, and nobody can tell me yes or no, and I'm not going to get hung up on that, because you can go down all those rabbit holes, right?

Laura Lummer 1:00:38
Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 1:00:38
I'm not going to do that, but the very clear fact is that 18 to 20 months of this journey was lost, and would I have gone to stage four. So being aware of what you look like and just having that that knowledge in the back of your brain, so that when somebody says males breast cancer, that synapse fires. Yeah, you go, oh yeah. You know what? I don't want is, you know, a guy in their early 50s having never heard that guys can get breast cancer, right? That's what I don't want. And so that when they're standing in front of that mirror and they're putting on their deodorant and they're finding that lump that they may not, because we're guys, right? They may not do anything about it in that moment, but they, they may not wait six months either, and I'd be fine with the happy medium there, right? I'd be fine with finding somewhere in the middle there of that day to six months from now. Let's, let's, let's, let's make it so if it's there for a little bit of time, then guys just inherently know, like women inherently know, breast cancer is a thing, that's what I want.

Laura Lummer 1:01:50
Yeah, I love it. I think that's great advice. And we will post all of your information where people can connect with you, all your social media channels, in the, in the show notes for this episode, and gosh, just thank you so much for coming here and spreading this awareness, and I will, I am a huge fan, and I am a huge supporter, and I'll make sure that anybody I can tell that men get breast cancer, and I'll tell you in closing, where I get treated, there's a cancer pavilion, and one of the leading doctors that treats breast cancer in that pavilion died from male breast cancer two years ago, and to that I was, when I heard that, I was like, whoa, and this is a doctor who treats breast cancer, you know, but it was one of the first times that I had heard about that happening to a man, and hopefully that just wasn't one of those weird stories where you tell people, oh, I have a cancer, and like, oh, my mom died from cancer, but you know, I'm just saying

Speaker 1 1:02:47
that none of those things bother me, you know, it's like, whatever,

Laura Lummer 1:02:50
yeah, so to me, when I heard that, I was just like, wow, wow, that was just mind blowing, so yes, it's real, yes, it happens, and it happens. There's, there's like, we always say, regardless of who gets it, like, cancer isn't picky, you know,

Speaker 1 1:03:06
not picky at all. Show

Laura Lummer 1:03:07
up, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Jake. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1 1:03:12
Thank you so much, friend. This was great.

Laura Lummer 1:03:13
All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I just love Jake. I love what he's doing in the world. I love how much awareness he brought to me throughout the discussion, and again, I hope you share his story with the men in your life that you love, because none of us are exempt from this disease, and we have to question why we're seeing a rise, but we also have to do whatever we can to increase awareness for prevention and early detection, so again I'll put Jake's contact information in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at the Breast Cancer Recovery coach.com forward slash 467 or just right here where you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform, you'll find the links, so give him a follow, because he's so inspirational, encouraging, not just for the men out there that may be having this experience or want more awareness on this topic, but for all of us who have had a breast cancer diagnosis. All right, friends, I will talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself and expect other people to be good too as well. Take care.