Area builder conquers male breast cancer
By Maggie DeMellier
RICHFIELD — Richfield resident Al Schleider describes himself as a “dig-in-and-do-it” kind of person, a builder of homes in Crystal Shores, Glencairn Estates and Firestone Trace.
In 2004, when he discovered a lump on his chest while showering, he wasted no time checking it out.
“When I touched that lump, I felt a sense of impending danger,” Schleider said. “I didn’t want to fool around.”
He left his vacation home in Florida, came home, called The Cleveland Clinic, and they quickly got him in for a check-up, mammogram and needle biopsy.
When he got the call telling him the diagnosis, he was stunned.
“How do I describe that
moment?” Schleider said. “It was like being
hit with a ton of bricks. Breast cancer. How can that
be? I thought only women got that. I couldn’t
sleep. I just kept hearing that phrase over and over
in my mind.
‘You have cancer.’”
He immediately began researching
the disease. He learned he had the same type of cancer
as 80 percent of female breast cancer patients, infiltrating
ductal cancer.
“Yes, men have milk ducts,”
he said. “I was shocked to know that I had one
in me. The male breast has exactly the same structure
as the female breast.”
Schleider also learned that in
2004, when his cancer was diagnosed, 211,606 women and
1,400 men were also diagnosed with breast cancer, and
that the average age of male breast cancer patients
is 65. He advises that all men, no matter what age,
do routine breast exams.
“Half of the men diagnosed
with breast cancer find it too late, because men don’t
check their breasts,” Schleider said.
He learned he would have to have
an entire breast removed, and he decided to have them
both removed.
“I didn’t like the
way it would look, with only one breast,” he said,
“and I didn’t want to take a chance that
I would have to go through this again.”
For the major operation, to remove
both breasts, skin, connective tissue and lymph nodes,
he was hospitalized for
only 22 hours.
“I think that is barbaric.
That’s not nearly enough time,” he said.
“I signed a petition to extend the amount of time
hospitals have to keep you after breast surgery.”
Schleider awoke from the surgery
with two drains, containing fluid, under each arm. He
went through months of chemotherapy, involving 42 trips
to The Cleveland Clinic. The treatments made him tired
and weakened his heart and immune system, but he had
expected that.
“I knew there was a poison
in my body, but it was helping,” he said.
Dealing with drains and swelling
in his arms, armpits and chest presented major challenges.
“Probably the worst part
of what I went through was the lymphadema (collection
of lymphatic fluid in bodily spaces),” he said.
“Most people don’t even know what lymphadema
is.”
The drains were in place for
six weeks, but Schleider said he will always have to
deal with the compromised lymphatic drainage system
in his upper body, so he used his builder’s ingenuity
to do something about it.
“At first, I couldn’t
sleep because the drains were dangling and they would
pull and hurt and I couldn’t get comfortable,”
he said. He asked his wife
to get him some mini-pads, which he applied to the drains
with the adhesive strip, leaving the soft side against
his body, and allowing the drains to be taped to his
body, without crimping them or stopping the drainage
process. This was the first of several devices he would
fashion during his recovery from breast cancer.
Another is a piece of rigid acrylic
piping, with a tennis ball on one end. He had the pipe
cut to the proper height, so he could sit in a chair,
put the tennis ball under his arm and lean on it, draining
an area under the armpit that is very hard to access.
“I should patent some of
these things,” he said, demonstrating the tennis
ball device.
He also works out his upper body
by using an overhead pulley, exercises regularly on
an upper body cycle and uses inflatable pumps to drain
fluid in his hands and arms once a day.
“The thing that has helped
the most with the lymphadema is my physical therapy
with Jim Porterfield,” he said.
Schleider said he receives lymphatic
drainage massage several times a week at Porterfield’s
office on White Pond Drive, and works out on equipment
designed to stimulate the areas
where drainage is compromised.
“It feels wonderful,”
Schleider said. “He has really helped me.”
He said the only thing that truly
frightened him was the effect his cancer would have
on his family.
“My kids were frightened
for me, but I told them, ‘I’ll be fine.
If I can build million-dollar homes, I can do this.
It’s just another challenge.’”
He said there is polarity in
everything, and you have to take the good with the bad.
“This has really strengthened
the bond between me and my wife (Barbara). She has been
wonderful,” Schleider said, choking up for the
first time during the interview. “I will never
forget the look on her face when they took me away for
surgery. She was trying so hard to hide it, but I saw
the fear, and I was afraid for her.
“If only 1,400 men got
this, and I was one of them, I must have gotten it for
a reason,” Schleider said. “You have to
look at it like an equation. On one hand, I lost my
breasts and I have to deal with the aftermath of surgery,
but on the other hand, I’m alive. I can feel the
breeze, see the flowers and enjoy my wife, children
and grandchildren. I’m lucky I caught this in
time.”
He credits his intuition
and a higher power for that, and
for the fact that he cut back on his building several
months before discovering the lump.
“I just felt like something
was going to happen, and we sold our home in Crystal
Estates and moved into an apartment, because we didn’t
know what we wanted to do,” he said. “At
one time, I had five homes going. I’m so glad
I cut back before all this happened.”
He is now retired and misses
building.
“I loved my work,”
he said, “but I have redirected my creativity.
I’ve taken up painting and photography, and I
am writing a book about my experiences.”
His book, “A Drive-through
Mastectomy,” is partially completed. He and Barbara
now live in a new home in The Woods.
“I let someone else build
this one,” he said.
Last year, at his daughter’s
urging, Schleider took part in a special event at Hudson
High School to raise money to combat breast cancer.
“We (survivors) walked
around the athletic track, and people clapped and cheered
for us and some of them cried,” Schleider said,
adding that he would be happy to talk to others who
are going through recovery. “There were thousands
of people there and so many survivors
of every age. Since my recovery, I have tremendous compassion
for anyone who has cancer.”
Richfield resident Al Schleider,
who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, wants
to spread the word that the disease doesn’t only
affect women. Photo:
Ken Crisafi
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