Edward W. Brooke has fought more than his share of battles in his 84 years — as an American soldier fighting behind enemy lines in WW II; as Attorney General, uncovering governmental corruption in his home state of Massachusetts; as a senator defending the Voting Rights Act, and as the first African-American elected to the United States Senate by popular vote. Still, nothing prepared him for a diagnosis of breast cancer two years ago, nor his subsequent role as the unofficial male icon in the fight against the disease.

“This was a big shock to me,” said Brooke, now retired, from his winter home in St. Martin. “Like most men, I didn’t know much about breast cancer and I certainly didn’t think of it as a male disease.”In fact, a higher percentage of men die of breast cancer than women. The disease claims one out of four — or 26% — of men sufferers, as compared to slightly fewer than one out of five women. Cancer experts estimate that about 400 of the 1,500 men diagnosed with breast cancer this year will die. About 211,000 new cases will be diagnosed among women, claiming 40,000 lives.The higher death rate among men, experts say, is attributed in large part to late diagnosis.“I think that a lot of men, most of them in fact, haven’t even heard of male breast cancer,” said Brooke. “Even many women don’t start out knowing a lot about it, even those that do regular breast examinations on themselves.” His wife Anne, is one such woman. Though never diagnosed with breast cancer, she has had some “scares” in the couple’s 25 years of marriage and has always been vigilant about regular mammograms and self-examination. But neither she nor her husband were particularly concerned when he began getting pains on the right side of his chest in the summer of 2002.

Never a smoker or drinker, Brooke ate sensibly, exercised regularly and had never been seriously ill. Even when the pain got worse and became localized in the area of his breast, Brooke chalked it up to sore muscles from gardening. It wasn’t until Anne discovered a small lump under her husband’s right nipple that the two got even slightly concerned. “It was about the diameter of a dime and was unusually hard,” she recalled. “Harder than anything I had ever felt in my own breast.”Brooke agreed to go to get a check-up, but complained to his doctor only of muscle soreness. After an x-ray and a blood test found nothing, his trusted physician sent him on his way, without even a tertiary examination of his breast. “Doctors just don’t examine the area around a man’s breast,” said Brooke. “It’s just not done, it should be, but it’s not.”Luckily, as he was leaving the doctor’s office, Brooke, as an afterthought, mentioned that his wife had found a growth under his right nipple. Within two days, after enduring a mammogram, a sonogram and a biopsy of his breast tissue, a diagnosis of breast cancer was confirmed.“I never thought I was going to die from it, but there were moments of fear and pain,” said Brooke, citing his needle biopsy and the days after his surgery when his wounds were draining. For Anne Brooke, the most difficult moments were during her husband’s surgery, when an attendant came out to tell her the “surgery would take much longer than expected.” “I knew that was code for saying the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes,” she said. Doctors performed a modified radical double mastectomy on Brooke, removing his right breast and several lymph nodes on that side. To guard against the possibility of infection and to create symmetry in his upper torso, they also removed part of his left breast, sparing his nipple on that side.

“I don’t think it looks bad or ugly at all,” said Anne. “He is much more conscious of it than I am.”

What Brooke is most conscious of, however, is not his post-operative physical appearance, but rather the need to spread the word about male breast cancer.

“When I was sitting in that pink-colored waiting room at George Washington University Hospital Breast Care Center, I thought to myself, ‘they sure didn’t build this room with a man in mind,’” he joked. “I was the only man in the room and I could tell all the women sitting there were thinking I was there to support my wife.”The lifelong advocate and legislator, who served in the Senate from 1967-79, is working with the Susan G. Komen Foundation, one of the nation’s leading breast cancer support groups, to increase awareness about male breast cancer.

“I have had important fights in my public life,” he said. “But this ranks at the top, because we are talking about life and death.”

Specifically, he wants to encourage doctors to perform breast examinations and mammograms on men and insurance companies to pay for the procedure.

Of equal, or perhaps greater importance, he wants men and their loved ones to take greater responsibility for monitoring their own health — including their breasts.

“Men don’t know that there is such a thing as male breast cancer and neither do their wives,” he said. “It is time that they learn.”