Husband, Wife Both Battle Breast Cancer

Oct. 16, 2009— -- Mike Welsh has stood by his wife for 43 years, in sickness and in health. But unlike most sympathetic husbands of women battling breast cancer, he can truly relate.

Nine months after Barbara Welsh, 63, of Munro, Ohio, had a lump removed in her breast, her husband found one in his own.

"They sent him out for a mammogram, if you can imagine, and they looked at him like he's crazy," Barbara Welsh said.

Mike Welsh, 62, found his lump after buckling a seatbelt and feeling a pain in his right breast. After a visit to the family doctor he mentioned the pain and asked "can men get breast cancer too?"

They can, and he did. The American Cancer Society estimates that 1,910 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 440 men will die from the disease in 2009.

Mike Welsh was diagnosed with an advanced stage of breast cancer and shortly afterwards underwent a radical mastectomy on the right side. He will soon receive more treatment at the Atrium Medical Center in Middletown, Ohio.

His wife caught her lump at an early stage of cancer and so only needed a lumpectomy -- also on her right side.

"He said, this sharing has got to stop," she laughed. "It may not be nice, but we're having fun with it."

"For a mammogram, boy, I know what you girls go through now," he said.

But despite Mike Welsh's sympathy, the Welshes said they have been greeted with a less-than-supportive reaction from their community.

Barbara Welsh has been criticized in public for taking off her head scarves and showing her bald head from her current doses of chemotherapy. Mike Welsh's news has been met with disbelief.

"When he tells them he has it, they think he's lying," she said. "Mike feels embarrassed but I said, 'Mike, if you can save one man, then let people know.'"

Men and women both technically have breast tissue, but women have 100 times the risk men do of developing breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Institute.