Tag: lung cancer

Greener Grass – The Disease Olympics Part 2

OK, Part 2 has 2 heads, how appropriate. See Part 1 here.

Where to start?! I’ll just plunge in with inter-disease races first then move on to the intra-cancer comparisons. Please note, that while this post is going to be critical of how other illness advocates present their message, I am so NOT saying their messages are not valid. Indeed they are valid, but the lack of knowledge and understanding is distracting for me, so I’m calling it out.

tumblr_na66sksUrN1qg3yejo1_1280My annoyance with the disease comparisons spiked over a year ago (or 2 years?) when I saw this screen grab of a tweet from a comedian I’d never really heard of. It set me off because of the fight language and the blame issue. Puh-leeze. I’ve written enough about how people with cancer are blamed, and so have others (see Blaming the Cancer Patient). My first thought was, has he never spoken to a lung cancer patient? What is the first thing lung cancer patients hear? “Oh did you smoke?” News alert! That is blaming at its finest, most insidious! And we blame cancer when someone dies do we? Um, no. If that were true the headlines would always read: “Cancer Kills Another Pop Star”, rather than the one we nearly ALWAYS see: “So and So Lost Their Battle with Cancer.” Language, word choice and placement matter greatly. But perhaps I’m being too harsh on this guy. Maybe it’s only when we live here in CancerLand that we notice these subtle language gymnastics.

My frustration with the mental illness awareness campaigns intensified even more when “Supernatural” star Jared Padalecki, in a “People” magazine interview promoting his new charity, said, “If somebody has cancer, they’re not embarrassed to have cancer – they know it’s not their fault. They know it’s a struggle. But, for some reason, if someone says they’re depressed, they assume that people are going to look at them like they have three heads.” Again with this bizarre notion that cancer patients are universally supported and never blamed, do not suffer from feelings of self-blame. Again I wonder if Padalecki even knows any lung cancer patients, who are notoriously blamed for their predicament.

At the bottom of this post I include a few links to articles about cancer patients and guilt/self-blame—it isn’t just me who blamed myself. As I noted in my “Did You?” post ages ago, we are bombarded with headlines on magazines, or just any media at all with quotes like: “eat this magic food to prevent these kinds of cancers”, or “50% of all cancers are preventable by modifying diet and exercise,” (it is Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society who often says something like that). Cancer patients “know it’s not their fault”????!!! Really????!!! I guess big stars live in a bubble and don’t read headlines on magazines in grocery check-out lines. Because it was those headlines while waiting in lines that really contributed to some of my post-treatment depression, my constant self blame.

Look, I agree, mental illness has a stigma. In writing this post I pondered whether to reveal the fact I’ve been on medication before and after my own cancer diagnosis for mild depression—I’ve been on it for years. I figured people would think 1) that my depression is why I’m a Curmudgeon (no, I’m medicated and still like this) and 2) I’m trying to validate my stance by saying I’m part of the mental illness community. I’m not; I’m merely trying to consider this from all angles.

But here is what I suspect is going on, and I might be 100% wrong. The messages of “if we have not been personally touched by cancer we know someone who has” have convinced society that everyone “knows” cancer. That really isn’t the same thing—a lesson that crashed down on my head soon after my own diagnosis. For me, and I suspect many others, cancer is nothing like the way it is shown in media fiction and PSAs. But now the general public is convinced that cancer patients are never blamed because they are not blamed in the TV ads—and so there is a bizarre disconnect from reality. But that disconnect doesn’t seem to stop spokespersons for other causes from using these falsehoods as a frame of reference to push their own agendas. They buy into the notion that the cancer patient is universally supported by the races and loved ones. They know nothing of the Institutional Knowledge I think comes to a cancer patient who has done a little time in cancer social media circles.

This frame of reference is used to the extreme every February, women’s heart disease awareness month. Sure, the stat about heart disease being more deadly than breast cancer is bandied about all year long, but February is intense. Breast cancer patients and the general population don’t even have time to recover from Pinktober shoving breast cancer down our throats when heart disease spokespeople begin over-using the phrase “breast cancer” all over again. I’ve long suspected the tide is turning in the perceived support for rah-rah Pinktober—there are more and more critiques and complaints about it each year.  What does this do to people’s minds, their subconscious? Are they hearing the warnings about heart problems or are they hearing that damned phrase “breast cancer” and turning their mind off? Breast cancer awareness suffers from over-exposure, and this is made worse when advocates for other health issues use that over-exposure to sell their own cause. Gee, thanks a lot.

Still, advocates for heart illness awareness have a point. Breast cancer has wrongfully become a bigger monster in the minds of women than heart disease. Breast cancer organizations AND the medical industry both are directly to blame for this. Early this year I wrote about a new cancer center built in my area dedicated to women’s health, but the advertising was all about breast health. Breast cancer is a proxy for women’s health. No mention of the more deadly heart disease in the magazine article/free advertising I read about the new center. No wonder heart disease advocates are frustrated. Cancer is the boogeyman the health industry uses on us, to the detriment of education about other, more pressing disasters.

Full disclosure, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer as she was hospitalized while dying of heart disease. She was not treated for her cancer, obviously. Both my mother and her sister (the aunt who was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 months before I was) were on blood pressure and other heart-related medications at an age younger than I am now—I am currently not. I always figured heart-blood things were going to be my future. Cancer was not even in my peripheral vision. Just another reason why I always say I was blindsided or sucker punched by breast cancer. So in many ways, my personal story is the opposite of what is considered “the norm”.

Again, I think the heart disease advocates’ message is valid, I’m just frustrated with the way they choose to present it—by using breast cancer. I was told on Twitter just the other day that saying heart disease kills more people does not diminish the breast cancer issue, it is merely an attempt to bring awareness. But the truth is, saying one thing is worse than another is inherently making a competitive comparison. Is heart disease worse in this particular competition, due to its higher body count? Yes. But it still causes me to wince—because as the previous paragraph describes, cancer seems to be the bigger problem for me at this stage of my life.

Please note I’m not taking sides here—everyone is to blame. This situation is just beyond fucked up. And no, I don’t have a solution to offer except: stop using cancer/breast cancer as a tool in your campaigns. The assumptions made about what it’s really like to have cancer are not always accurate. And using breast cancer to make a point, as a frame of reference may not result in directing attention where it needs to go–in the instance of this tired Curmudgeon, I merely stop listening altogether; I wonder how many others do too.

I get tired of seeing graphics created by a variety of organizations saying their disease-afflicted body part is just as important as “boobs” (I hate that word, see Some Word Problems), that their disease is not pink. (Thank you to @bccww for helping me find some of these things and helping with this post!) I know some folks have gotten riled up about it on Facebook. I see both sides of the argument. The advocates for other diseases see all the attention breast cancer gets and are motivated to both strike out at it and use it to get attention for their own cause. Advocates for other kinds of cancer use the tactic too, with the ever-present “Not all cancers are pink”, featuring a ribbon of some other color, associated with the cancer being represented. What everyone fails to realize in these moments is that many breast cancer patients hate Pink, does not recognize those who say repeatedly, cancer is not pink, or the color pink is not the actual cure. I hate the color divides. Sigh.

And with this I turn to the intra-cancer comparisons.

That Pancreatic Cancer Action PSA is a shining example of how frustrating the whole “this kind of cancer is easy, mine is much worse” scenario is. The best response to the whole ad was I Hate Breast Cancer’s line:  “If you’re going to wish for breast cancer, make sure you put in a special request for the non-metastatic kind.”

Because guess what, so many people think breast cancer is all solved, never causes death anymore! And yes, I realize the metsters will point out breast cancer is NOT deadly, only metastatic breast cancer is—I’ll deal with one downmanship within breast cancer patients in the next post.

Like the mental illness, heart disease, and all other health issue campaigns, advocates for other cancers have swallowed the Pink Kool-Aid and concluded that all of us with breast cancer are wearing pink feather boas and having some kind of party—or so it seems to me when I see crap like this. I guess this makes it easier to use breast cancer as a scapegoat (see What Is It About Breast Cancer That makes It Everyone’s Scapegoat?

I’ve written about this issue a few times before: Does Breast Cancer Owe It To Other Cancers, First Ribbon Problems, and Want Attention? Just Say Breast Cancer. I’ve probably said most of what I think in those posts, but here is just a little more.

The biggest divide I perceive is between lung cancer and breast cancer—again because of the higher body count lung cancer causes. I once read an article by a woman who had both cancers and unequivocally claimed lung was worse because of the stigma associated with it (I cannot locate it or I’d link it here). She claimed she was never blamed or asked behavioral questions about her breast cancer. Well bully for her, I did not have the same experience. Even with that sentence I see I still have resentment toward her and her article, when it really should be aimed at the public—for asking stupid questions out of fear, out of a need to have imaginary control over their own cancer risks (again, read Did You?—I said all I need to say there). But I remain frustrated at the reinforcement of the idea that no breast cancer patient ever has had to put up with some blame, yes, even when it is significantly less than lung cancer patients. I don’t like anything that does not give a full and clear picture of the truth.

Some time ago I read another piece about the lung cancer stigma, and it was fantastic. It posed the question if lung cancer patients who had smoked deserved less compassion than those who had not, a very scary question and response. I agreed with the author on so many fronts except maybe one. She was a big supporter of all pink races and activities and was not suggesting that breast cancer awareness should tone it down. I’m not so sure about that. I’ve said it before and say it again: awareness is a two-way street. Are the pink-crazed party, oops, I mean, race, organizers at all aware of the fallout they’ve created? The animosity?

I’m not “picking on” lung cancer, I just know it has the higher body count. There is quite a bit of bad blood between breast cancer and gynecological cancers too. A local breast cancer ONLY support organization is called Women Supporting Women. (Disclosure–yes they were good to me upon my own diagnosis, although ultimately I got more support from the center at which I was treated, near my work, not my home.) WSW was founded by a breast cancer survivor for women with breast cancer. They took a beating on Facebook some months ago–several people piping up and asking why there was not a race for kidney, pancreatic, etc, cancer. Their answer was that breast cancer was what they were founded for. I get that, but their name is misleading–at the very least include the gynecological cancers! But I don’t sense change coming anytime soon.

I’ve had people tell me quite bluntly: “If I get to pick, Id (sic) rather get boob cancer. You can live without those and people tread(sic) you with love, caring and compassion when you get that cancer.” People get very angry when breast cancer patients, with our perceived advantages, complain, when we bite the hand that feeds. I used to think yes, breast cancer patients have an obligation to advocate for other kinds of cancer because of the bullying of the Pink ribbon. But these days I don’t think so. Too many have bought into the ideas of breast cancer, and think we are ungrateful (see Burden of Gratitude), and I’m not sure their minds can be changed. I’m sure to get flak for this post too, and I can direct people to all the older posts I’ve written, explaining my ambivalence about this topic, but it will be to no avail. So I ask my questions and expect no answers or solutions.

Breast cancer patients contribute to the misconceptions at times, too. There was an awful piece in HuffPo a couple of years ago—I will not link to it because I am aware that the author of the piece was sorry about the insult to other cancer patients. She did claim however, that some cancers, such as thyroid, are easier than others in terms of treatment and survival. Needless to say the thyroid cancer community roared back in the comments to the point that it became just piling on, with later comments not contributing new insights, just being nasty. Her overall piece, a list of truths or realities one only gets upon actually getting cancer, was quite good—it was a shame the Cancer Olympics got in the way–and yes she put it there.

I’ve also read MANY times breast cancer patients, soooo angry about the sexualization of breast cancer, ask, how about we treat other cancers the same way? It is a tone deaf question, and a foolish one. Many patients with other cancers, lacking a good prognosis due to lack of research, from a lack of—you guessed it—funds from silly sexy breast cancer awareness campaigns, would be oh so glad to have a butt cancer campaign, or whatever, to get the same “status” breast cancer occupies. As much as I hate the sexualization, this is a bad strategy in my book. Again, I explained all of this in Burden of Gratitude. When I see that kind “let’s sexualize prostate cancer” crap I groan–this is exactly why I hate comparing cancer.

Ultimately we all suffer from a common disease: The Grass Is Always Greener On the Other Side of the Fence Disease. Mental Illness patients look to cancer and think all cancer patients get tons of support and no blame—they only see the green grass of having cancer. Heart disease advocates see a disease with a lower incident rate yet higher funding income and just see our green grass. Patients with any other kind of cancer that isn’t breast see our green grass—or pink as the case may be. We breast cancer patients wonder about the greener pastures over on other sides of fences too. None of us completely see the brown, dead grass patches on those other sides. And I think those brown patches are spreading, maybe they’ll be harder to miss.

I’ve written this before but it bears repeating: the high or low body count doesn’t matter to the one doing the dying, or to the ones that love them. I think often of the example of Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch, who died not long after I completed treatment, of salivary gland cancer. It’s an extremely rare cancer, so it won’t be labeled an epidemic, people won’t make signs and t-shirts exclusively for it; it will merely be lumped into the fights for “all cancers”. But how is that rarity a comfort to his family, to his fans? His death at age 47—a number I’m fast approaching—was still horrible. We can argue about which disease community has it the worst all damn day. The answer will always be not one community—no, it will be the dead, regardless of the cause, and their loved ones. They have it the worst. There’s no competition.

The blame or guilt of cancer patient links as referred to above:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/life-interrupted-feeling-guilty-about-cancer/?_r=0

http://www.cancer.net/coping-and-emotions/managing-emotions/coping-guilt

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-jacoby/stop-making-cancer-patien_b_6169134.html

https://vimeo.com/60463850

Part 3 is on the way, about how horrible we breast cancer patients can get toward one another.

 

 

 

A Cancer Free Mother’s Day

A/N: This post will address my discomfort with what I perceive as the way Mother’s Day is now linked with breast cancer. I’ve read a few blog posts about mothers recently, and I think I’m in the minority with my discomfort at this association (again, maybe this is just what I see). I can only speak from where I stand: a woman with breast cancer who is not a mother, whose own mother does not yet have breast cancer, and who was my primary care-giver during cancer. I realize several bloggers I read had mothers who died of breast cancer, and as I do not, so I can only empathize. I hope this post communicates empathy, and is not tone deaf.

That said, I will try to be delicate, but I still think this post will offend some readers. Please proceed with caution, or maybe don’t read.

Later March through mid-May now mirrors October for me, in my Mid-Atlantic American resort area. I cannot get down a street or open a local paper without seeing a poster-sized advertisement for some race, walk, softball game, or other activity to benefit local breast cancer organizations.

In many ways, Pink invading this time of year makes more sense than October. Pink is often associated with springtime. The days are usually warm—great for races or outdoor games. Plus, so many harvest/back-to-school/holiday season events happen at the end of the year, I suspect moving breast cancer races to springtime means less competition from those other events (this may only be true in my region, I don’t know).  As I wrote about wanting to reclaim October last fall, I wondered why October is designated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month; I thought a spring month would be more appropriate. I think I used good ol’ Google, and never got a full answer. Or maybe I’m just being wishful—I hate Pink painted all over my beloved golds and oranges—so a BCAM move to a spring would be a relief in my view. *My apologies to those reading who are not in the Northern Hemisphere, for my American seasonal POV here.

Some of the shenanigans associated with the local fundraisers this year are the topic of maybe another post, but I’m grappling with another painful area right now. What is bothering me is the linking of Mother’s Day to breast cancer.

I noticed it last year, in March, when I got a post-card from a local breast cancer organization regarding a project of sending photos and/or stories about Mom. Of course, there was also the suggestion of a donation in mom’s name for the holiday. I got the same card again this spring, too. As far as I could tell, the moms to be honored need not be breast cancer patients, I think—but to be honest, I did not look too deep into it; I found it too disturbing. My quick scan of the website led me to a donations page, and another suggestion of donations in anyone’s honor for any holiday—including Father’s Day. I admit I was impressed by that—finally an acknowledgement that men can get breast cancer, however indirect that acknowledgement. Donating in honor of someone for a gift can be positive, if done wisely and so long the honoree’s charitable giving preferences are respected. But only a donation in honor of Mother’s Day warrants extra special attention, I see.

So it isn’t the money that is necessarily bothering me (too much) in this situation. Perhaps this post is me trying to put my finger on just what is bothering me about the fact I keep seeing the words: mom/mother and breast cancer together on one page so much lately.

There is a subtle whiff of marketing of course. I understand non-profits need to seize every opportunity to make money. It’s just, why the automatic leap that seems to go like this: mothers = women = women’s issues/health = breast cancer, so suddenly the holiday becomes all about breast cancer? Perhaps my view is too narrow here; I did not investigate organizations for ovarian or any other cancers, to see if there were campaigns to fundraise to honor one’s mother.

But it wasn’t just local breast cancer support organizations that seemed to link mothers to breast cancer for holiday festivities—local and national media linked the two as well. I opened the Sunday paper, and the magazine insert featured Christina Applegate and her mother, both famous breast cancer survivors. Why not feature them in October? Why not feature, I don’t know, a successful mother and daughter-owned business—as in, something women achieved rather than had to deal with? Or a mother and daughter both with any other cancer? I mean, any gynecological cancer would’ve been appropriate for Mother’s Day, right? Or are those diseases not common enough to suit everyone’s needs? Well, that argument doesn’t work—I’ve pointed out enough on this blog about how awareness advocates for diseases such as lung cancer and heart disease use breast cancer to point out how these diseases harm more women than breast cancer (Want Attention? Just Say Breast Cancer). So why no cover story of a mother and daughter team taking measures to prevent hereditary heart disease? As more intelligent women than I have long pointed out—why is breast cancer a stand-in for all women’s health?

I turned on the local news that night, and a woman who overcame a number of odds—widowhood, breast cancer—to return to school for her degree was featured. The cynic in me wondered if they started by looking for this news story by researching local “older” college graduates who were moms, or did they start at breast cancer support organizations to find her.

Is having breast cancer a prerequisite to be considered a mother worthy of honor? Is breast cancer the one and only threat to health and well-being of mothers all over? Is overcoming breast cancer the only achievement women can be publicly lauded for? Because that seems to be the message the media gave out that day, in my view.

Again, I cannot stress enough that I do not want to be insensitive here. Much is written about hereditary breast cancer—because breast cancer has that family link, even for this Cancer Curmudgeon, so it is natural for this mother-daughter + breast cancer topic to be written about. And most of the bloggers I read acknowledged the deaths caused by all hereditary cancers.

So maybe what is making me uncomfortable is this.

My mother’s mother had breast cancer at the very end of her life, over a decade ago. It went untreated because she was in the process of dying of heart disease. Then in 2010, my mother watched her youngest sister, that she cared for as if she were her own child, get breast cancer around age 50. A few months later her own, only child (yours truly), got breast cancer. My mother has had enough of breast cancer. I know there is no such thing as a trade off in the world of cancer (wrote about this a long time ago)—just because everyone around her has had breast cancer does not make her exempt. And that is what frustrates me so much. I was constantly barraged with subtle or direct messages over the past few weeks that seemed hell bent on making me understand something I am only too aware of: mothers get breast cancer. Breast cancer is a clear and constant threat to us, and we cannot ever get away from it.

My mother should be honored because she had to, and still has to, put up with my whiny, angry, annoying breast cancer patient self. Hell, my mother should be honored for putting up with the annoying person I was before breast cancer. So I honored her by shutting up about breast cancer all day on Sunday.

I’ve been tied up in knots about writing this post. I know that many women have had mothers and/or grandmothers die because of breast cancer and I do not mean to imply that their pain should be ignored—of course Mother’s Day is difficult. But it is also difficult for anyone whose mother is no longer alive for any reason; something a friend’s story reminded me of sadly last Sunday. I could not help but wonder if there were adult children out there, again resentful of breast cancer being shoved down throats on that day just as it is in October. I mean, it only stands to reason that this would happen, given the backlash to breast cancer that is happening in other cancer organization campaigns (Pancreatic Cancer Action PSA, anyone?).  Are other children perceiving a message that their own mother’s lives were somehow less significant because they had/have other cancers or challenges? And I very much resented the fact that a day meant to honor and celebrate, for me, was under a cloud of cancer, the same cloud I see nearly every damn day.

So I took one day off from cancer. And I want an end to ALL cancers. I’ll take that any day, it doesn’t need to be saved for a holiday.

 

Does Breast Cancer Owe It to Other Cancers?

A/N This is a potentially offensive post, please follow my train of thought to the end, I am trying NOT to be a jackass, and failing. This is just how I am seeing this issue at the moment. I beg you to change my mind in the comments.

Here is yet another criticism of that 2020 deadline, Can Setting a Deadline Put an End to Breast Cancer?  by Geoffrey Kabat. I’ve already blogged about this issue, when that editorial in “Nature” appeared few months ago.

Honestly, I have a few problems with the 2020 Deadline myself, even more now than when I originally wrote about it. My biggest problem is one of the main issues confronted by these editorials: that discovery cannot be forced; it will not answer to a deadline. I agree with this, and even the idea that setting a goal that has a real chance of NOT being met is a bit risky.

But what irks me is in both of these pieces, there is this suggestion, no, AN EXPECTATION that breast cancer activists, advocates, organizations should focus on other cancer problems, not just breast cancer. These activists/organizations have done such a good job of creating awareness (really?), the energy should be applied to other cancers, so the thinking, I assume, must go.

Is it really the best solution for National Breast Cancer Coalition, or any other organization DEDICATED to breast cancer, to handle other cancer problems? I mean, National BREAST CANCER Coalition, see? BREAST CANCER right there in the name. There probably are already some organizations taking on other cancers in baby steps now; goodness knows the damn ribbons for all other diseases exist (stop reducing diseases to ribbons!), and I suspect these groups have adopted some tactics of breast cancer awareness. If so, let us hope these groups learn from pink marketing’s mistakes before they go too far. The deadline has a focus of ending breast cancer, misguided or not, but that is because the whole point of the organization is…wait for it…BREAST CANCER. That is why it formed. Its objective, according to an old address by its president Frances Visco, is to end breast cancer and cease to exist because it would no longer be needed. Why would anyone think it should do other work—to self-perpetuate?

It’s just that the logic demanding breast cancer organizations (which were formed for WHAT disease, again? yes I’m being sarcastic) work on other cancers is flat out faulty. Go with my flow here for a second. This author points out lung cancer kills more women, and says a breast cancer organization should do something about it. This implies breast cancer is just a women’s problem, breast cancer organizations are just women’s organizations. Well, no, men get it too, and a breast cancer organization is about all breast cancer no matter what the sex of the body it’s in; and the breast cancer organization is not focusing on all health issues suffered by women (because it was formed to focus on what disease again? Say it all together now: BREAST CANCER). Yes the opposite is true; breast cancer can be under the umbrella of women’s health. So when he says “The exclusive focus on breast cancer skews one’s perspective by blotting out other opportunities,” does he really mean we should get rid of some breast cancer organizations, and pay less attention to breast cancer because other diseases kill more women, and are therefore more important? Because that is kind of what it sounds like, and that would be incredibly stupid.

Also, I am a little confused and bewildered at the author’s suggestions that breast cancer organizations work specifically on lung and cervical cancers. According to the information in his editorial, the causes of these two are known and preventions available. The reason the 2020 project is in place is to find the cause(s) and some preventions for breast cancer. That would mean, work on breast cancer is far behind the work on these other two cancers. So, is he suggesting breast cancer organizations work on these projects because, what, it’s easier? And what, just say to future breast cancer patients, sorry you’re SOL, it was easier to sell what we already had or knew, because we did not want to invest in even trying to make a discovery?

Perhaps the bug up everyone’s ass is jealousy because of all the attention breast cancer has amassed over the past few decades. I KNOW lung cancer AND heart disease kills more women. Not this article, but plenty of other articles about heart disease always seem to start off with a sentence about how heart disease kills more women than breast cancer, as if the authors are personally offended that breast cancer gets more attention than their cause (read this fabulous rant by a blogger on Tumblr). I know everyone has their own agenda, their own pet cause because it is something that impacts them, and each individual is entitled to their viewpoint and their cause. But picking on breast cancer is just getting tiresome.

Breast cancer organizations are most likely run/staffed/founded by those with personal knowledge of it, which is why they work on it (duh, it is what they know best), rather than, say, heart disease. I blog about breast cancer because I had it. When I get heart disease, I’ll blog about that too. It is the nature of the beast. Should diseases that kill more people get more attention? Maybe, but how does that make those diseases more important, more devastating, than a rare disease to someone who has had loved ones die from said rare disease? Who the hell goes around saying “my disease is more important than your disease because it kills more people”? Breast cancer patients, imagine saying to your ovarian cancer friends “breast cancer is more important because more women have it?” How much of an asshole would you have to be to say that? But it seems OK to imply these other diseases are more important than breast cancer for the same reason. Breast cancer may be viewed as a big ol’ pink bully in disease world, but it is starting to be the one bullied. Apparently payback is a bitch.

color pink

The blessing and the curse of pink marketing is that it made breast cancer seem like the most important and desirable cause in the world; getting a lot of money and research which resulted in treatments that saved lives, including my own, for which I am grateful. But the fact is, pink dollars didn’t stop breast cancer from happening to women, it didn’t even really slow it down, just stopped some of the dying. But not all of the dying. Breast cancer patients still get mets and die, no matter how much pink marketing pretends this doesn’t happen (remember, cancer patients don’t die, they lose their battle). In short, pink has not been a blinding success. So when advocates for other health causes complain about how much attention breast cancer gets, I suggest taking a long hard look at that, and understand there is a dirty underside to pink that needs exposure. And there are plenty of bloggers exposing it, it wouldn’t be hard to learn the truth.

Back to the question at hand, do breast cancer organizations owe it to other disease problems? I’m certainly not suggesting here that breast cancer groups should just turn up their noses and say “not my problem” about other cancers. There are more breast cancer survivors because incidence has not decreased like the death rate. I may feel a personal obligation to advocating, yelling, on behalf of those causes, but I don’t think an organization devoted to a certain focus should split that focus; that is unfair to the people the organization set out to serve. It is difficult to say which is the more compassionate choice here, if there is one. And yes I do realize that new organizations for unrepresented causes/diseases cannot just be created with the snap of fingers. I don’t have the answer; I’m only asking the question. It will take many minds to come up with the solution.