Where Do You Store Your Cell Phone?

I've been wanting to write this post ever since my cancer surgeon, radiologist and their cancer tumor board re-reviewed my biopsy tissue after it had already been studied by my original family doctor's team. When they had their meeting recently, a question that came up in discussion was 'where does she store her cell phone?' 

This might be a silly question for some, but it has serious repercussions that are now coming out in studies. It's still very new in terms of 'etiology' of certain cancers -- of how these cancers start. Then there's the question of how cancer cells continue to grow and multiply. Thankfully for all the research being done on breast cancer some of these questions are being answered.

In my case, the doctor asked me on the phone "Did you ever store your cell phone in your bra?"

I had an OMG moment complete with the hand on my cheek, and going from a stand to a sit position. I told her "ALL the time -- especially when I was training about 8-10 years ago. Then pretty often. Often enough that when my son was a toddler he started to copy me and put things down his shirt like mommy did (only to wonder why his items didn't stay). On easy runs, I would often stick my phone in my jogbra with a headset I could use to catch up on phone calls. Last year I finally got a fanny pack that works for me and haven't used the jogbra storage since."

My cancer surgeon said that my cells are very similar in configuration as the many young women getting breast cancer. It's still not a proven thing, but definitely being studied. Mine will be added to that batch of cancer studies.

I learned that I could have had the start of a non-invasive and non-aggressive cancer about 8-10 years ago now turned invasive and aggressive. It's possible it started growing before I was pregnant with my son. Over time, these became invasive. Coupled with having dense breast tissue, my cancer was not easily detectable on mammograms only. Luckily we live a new era in which dense tissue is receiving attention in the mainstream media -- and my cancer was thankfully caught through extensive testing at a stage that at least is curable via an upcoming mastectomy and post mastectomy treatment.

In so many ways I'm grateful -- I'm grateful that my friend needed her mammogram and I went with her to get mine at the same time. Without this appointment at this stage, I probably wouldn't have scheduled it until the end of this year due to other commitments that keep me busy. Who knows how far this cancer could have invaded by then. I'm also thankful that I was able to have my son -- I can't imagine how different my life would have been without him had I gone through cancer treatment at that stage in my life.

I hold on to the positives.

For more information about cell phones and storage, read the following story and view the embedded video (unfortunately the video is not closed captioned -- they need to work on this!). What is interesting it's not just jogbras -- it's also men's breast pockets and pants pockets. There's all these young men getting cancer in these areas and researchers are now diving into this research.  Out of curiosity my husband went to iPhone's warning page -- none of us should store our phone within half an inch from our body.

Article and video in a November 2012 cancer link to cell phones being kept in breast pocket area
http://wtvr.com/2012/11/19/doctors-women-who-store-phone-in-bras-at-risk-for-breast-cancer/