To Educate This October

Most of us acknowledge “awareness” has been achieved, it is time for education. There are so many myths out there about breast cancer to be busted! Like how 1 in 8 is lifetime risk, not the risk a random 40 year old (non-BRCA) woman has. That’s just one of those fuzzy slogans that needs to be cleared up. What are some others? I’m not good with stats and numbers–but so many of you are–help me!

This anotheronewiththecancer blog of mine has been like a 4 years long gripe. I complain a lot, I know. And anyone would be right to ask me what I plan to do instead of just bitching. How can anyone expect people to know what it’s REALLY like to have breast cancer unless we tell people? How can people know that getting reconstruction is not a simple,”boob job” unless we explain how it’s different? How can people know how much we fear recurrence and that can happen even after that magical, mythical 5 year mark? How can people know that completing treatment doesn’t equal being “all done”, that in fact, my oncologist’s phone number will be in my contact list for a whole ten years? For that matter how can people understand that for metastatic patients treatment NEVER ends, until death? (Check out the Laurie Becklund video and my post about these issues in The Next Time Round.)

On October 1st, please join us in educating, in setting the record straight, in injecting some reality into the perky Pink slogans that will saturate all media and even our in real life experiences for 31 days. Use #BreastCancerRealityCheck and tell people all kinds of things that you wish they knew! We’d especially like this to get trending on Twitter–so, tweet, tweet, tweet!

I for one, and I suspect many of you who read my blog, am just so tired of all slogans. I’m compiling a list of things I want people to know. All under 140 characters, which if you’ve read my long-winded blog posts over the years, you know how tough it is for me!

We so often say it is time for education, the time for awareness is over. So, in the spirit of Fall, let’s take the public back to school.

Author: Cancer Curmudgeon

Oct 2010 diagnosed with Stage 3, HER2+ Breast Cancer. Completed treatment Jan 2012. Waaaaaay over pink. Applying punk rock sensibility to how I do cancer. View all posts by Cancer Curmudgeon