Open & Honest...

Wanda Sykes, you may know her as a comedian, or possibly, you have seen her in many different movie parts, or as a voice for a cartoon character.  She has a sharp, witty way about her style.  This past February she decided it was time to have breast reduction surgery.  She was tired of carrying around all the extra weight and she was starting to have back problems.  In an interview on the "Ellen DeGeneres Show" this past Monday, she opened up about her battle with breast cancer.  She told Ellen that her cancer was called, ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, as the basis of her diagnosis, a type of breast cancer she described as "basically stage-zero cancer," DCIS is known as stage zero or non-invasive breast cancer, meaning the cancer has not broken through the lining of the milk ducts, which was explained by Kathie-Ann Joseph, MD, Director Breast Services at the Health and Hospitals Corporation, NYU Medical Center in New York. It makes up about 25 percent of all breast cancers. "If you are going to get breast cancer, this is the one to get," Joseph says, citing its 99 percent survival rate and the unlikelihood that chemotherapy will be required.  So you may ask, why did Sykes' early detection result in a double mastectomy? "Many women are choosing to have double mastectomies because they do not want to deal with breast cancer again in the future, or they may have what is called the BRCA mutation, a genetic mutation that is hereditary that predisposes you to developing breast and ovarian cancer," Joseph says. "These women often have a very strong family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer in the family and often develop breast cancer at an early age (but not always) and can often get breast cancer more than once."  Sykes' in her usual funny sense of humor stated that, " she was real hesitant about doing this, because she hates walking.  She went on to say that she will now, have many ( Cancer ) walks coming up.  So who knows, maybe one of these days we will see Wanda Sykes walking among us doing a Susan G. Komen 3-Day?