Breast cancer: Decorated soldier joins new battle

FLAGLER BEACH, Fla. -- Underneath the host of medals on Lloyd Freckleton's Army uniform is a scar on his left chest that was not from his service in the Gulf War or Vietnam, but from a new battle in which he's enlisted.

The mission: spreading the word to men that they, too, can get breast cancer.

Feckleton had planned a typical day of golf with his buddies when he Freckleton rolled over to get out of bed and felt something "strange" as his arm brushed against his left chest.

With his right hand, he examined it more closely and thought "it feels like a lump."

He took a shower and went on to play golf. The next day he told his wife he'd wait for his regularly scheduled appointment in a few weeks to check it out. She put her foot down and scheduled an appointment for the same day.

A mammogram followed soon after, then a biopsy and news earlier this year that he had breast cancer. Within weeks of finding the lump, he had a mastectomy removing his left breast and four lymph nodes.

The retired Army colonel and former New York Department of Corrections warden now carries the title of breast cancer survivor.

Freckleton, a Flagler Beach resident who also serves on the board of trustees at Daytona State College, is part of Florida Hospital's Pink Army program helping fellow comrades in the war against breast cancer. As a "Pink Army Soldier," his photo in his Army uniform will be on postcards mailed to thousands of homes in Flagler County to educate residents about breast cancer and screening mammograms.

Normally a reserved and private man who "likes to stay under the radar," Freckleton is speaking out to bring awareness to a disease most commonly associated with women.

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'FACT OF LIFE'

Being a man and a breast cancer survivor, he said, is just "a fact of life."

"It's just another form of a disease you get. It happens. It just happens to be in a spot that doesn't usually happen in men," Freckleton said.

The American Cancer Society reports about 2,190 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in men this year, accounting for about 1 percent of all breast cancers. For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is one in 1,000 whereas for women it is about one in eight.

Freckleton, 63, who will take tamoxifen as a preventative measure for five years and get routine CAT scans, tells his golfing friends that they should check themselves "to make sure you don't have lumps because it can happen."

When he was diagnosed in January this year, he had heard "there were rare cases."

"I just felt I was an anomaly," Freckleton said until his wife started researching on the Internet. "I figured I got it. They got it out. Let's move on."

He's glad he listened to his wife and didn't wait to see the doctor.

His wife, Deborah, dean of the Honors College at Bethune-Cookman University and former faculty association president, said "when something comes on your body that is abnormal like that, you need to go get it checked out right away. It's nothing to play around with."

After the biopsy of the more than nickle-size tumor and before the surgery to remove his breast, she said she could tell her husband of 32 years was "troubled" by the news.

"He internalizes. He won't express it, but I could tell," she said.

But then the general surgeon, Dr. Darren Peterson, told him he will be a cancer survivor and able to share his story with others. "That cheered him up," his wife said.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/08/3039694/breast-cancer-decorated-soldier.html

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