Utah County survivor warns about breast cancer risk for men

PROVO — As Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October is always a time of year that draws attention to the risk to women's health.

A Utah County man is living proof, though, that it can happen to men, too.

Jon Hadley's story started two summers ago with a different kind of cancer.

"I noticed a little black dot in my left ear," Hadley said during an interview Thursday with KSL. "By the end of the summer, it had really grown — just all inside my ear, so I went to the doctor, had it checked out, and the test came back positive for melanoma."

Hadley said the doctor recommended he have a positron emission tomography (PET) scan to screen for other cancers in his body, and he was stunned by the results.

"A hotspot showed up over my left breast," Hadley said. "(I) went to get a mammogram, and so that came back positive for breast cancer."

Hadley had always been aware on some level that the sun's rays could put him at risk for skin cancer, but he never thought he was at risk for breast cancer, which he said was completely unrelated to the melanoma.

At Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, doctors said they've often witnessed the survival stories of women diagnosed with breast cancer, but the same can't be said about men.

"Breast cancer in men is much more rare — about 1 in 1,000 men get breast cancer compared to 1 in 8 women," said Dr. Lisa Anderson, a breast surgical oncologist at the hospital. "This is a stereotypically female disease, and men are not looking or aware of some of the changes that can happen."

Anderson said that while screening for breast cancer is not recommended for men, self-awareness about any changes to breast health is important in both women and men.

"(It) most commonly presents as a palpable mass behind the nipple," Anderson said. "It can also show as an inverted nipple, some bloody nipple discharge—those are the most common things I've seen in men that I've treated."

In hindsight, Hadley had one of those warning signs but didn't realize what it was.

"On my nipple, sometimes you leak things or you rub against your nipples," Hadley explained. "I'd have some leakage after I'd come back from a run, but then it happened often that I was leaking some pus, which is kind of gross, and then around my nipple was kind of hard—I had a hard surface around there. I had just thought the leakage was because I trail run all the time, and so sometimes that happens, but that is a sign of breast cancer."

Hadley said his breast cancer was caught at Stage 2. He successfully completed chemotherapy and radiation and had a mastectomy to eradicate the breast cancer.

He hopes sharing his story would help other men be more aware of the risk.

"It really makes you think about how fleeting life can be, you know?" Hadley said. "Catching it early ... that saved my life."