By The Survivors Club Team
October 13, 2009

A husband and wife in Ohio are proof that breast cancer can strike both sexes.  Barbara and Mike Welsh of Monroe, Ohio, each underwent surgery this year after separate diagnoses with a disease that will afflict 192,000 women this year and 1,900 men.

After surgery in July, her 62-year-old husband is determining the next step in his recovery, which may include chemotherapy and radiation.

Mike Welsh iwants other men to know that breast cancer can strike them too.

"If I could help 10 people or 100, that's a start," Welsh, a retired AK Steel bricklayer, told the AP.

This year, 192,370 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,170 will die from it.  In addition, around 440 men will die from the disease.

Welsh first noticed something was wrong when he got into his car and felt discomfort as he strapped the seat belt across his chest.

The couple, married 41 years, laugh about their experience to help stave off the depression that sunk in after their diagnoses.

"You've got to laugh at it," Mike Welsh said. "You have good days, bad days and better days. We're having fun with it."

He and his wife joke that she glows from radiation treatment that she has begun.

"I'm going to set her outside for Halloween," Mike Welsh said.

For more information about surviving and thriving with breast cancer, please visit The Survivors Club Breast Cancer Support Center.