Prevention
There is always a lot of talk and focus on “breast cancer awareness,” especially in the month of October. I applaud all that but I think there is a lot of money being spent and a lot of money being made to make people aware of what they already know. When one out of every eight women will have a breast cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, how much more awareness do we really need?I feel it’s much more important for our society and medical community to work on a different spoke of the breast cancer wheel and that is prevention. I know it might sound a little holistic to some, but if we can figure out what causes this disease and find ways to prevent it from happening, we eliminate so many other factors that follow those dreaded diagnoses. I am not a doctor or scientist or chemist or researcher. I admit to much ignorance in the field of breast cancer. But what I am is a guy who lost his wife to metastatic breast cancer and a guy with a lot of questions. I think many of those questions have common sense answers that can be implemented if we get around the politics, bureaucracy, insurances, pharmaceuticals and general disdain for human life.
I don’t dispute that statistics indicate a decrease in breast cancer deaths over recent years. Still, according to the American Cancer Society, somwehere around 40,000 women will succumb to that disease in the United States this year, as they have most every year.
Millions of dollars are raised every year to find a cure for breast cancer. Why is such little progress made? What makes this disease so diffucult to get a handle on? Why can’t science and medicine find a way to cure more people? Why is metastatic breast cancer left out in the cold and seems like the facet of breast cancer that nobody wants to hear about? These are all questions I have plus many more. I know they may be considered almost rhetorical in nature, but I can’t help asking them.
On this page, I don’t intent to reinvent the wheel. There are many organizations and websites that are professional and know exactly what they are talking about. I am a novice in this field and willingly defer to their expertise. Instead, I intend to read what they are doing and passing that information on as I discover it. We are not alone in this fight, it just seems like it sometimes.
After my wife Coleen lost her battle, I found a note in our bedroom that she had written to herself. At the top of the page it said:
Breast Cancer Things I Wish I’d Known ….
She then listed eight different topics or in her words, “breast cancer things” that she deemed important. Prevention was one of the items listed but when I look at the list in it’s entirety, every one of her “breast cancer things” is in itself a form of prevention. At the time she would have written that list, prevention was too late for her. She was in a different state of survival by then. But Coleen was always trying to improve things, always reaching out to help others. I know this was her intention, to let other people know what she felt was right and to let them know how they could keep themselves healthier.
She can’t do that by herself anymore but I believe that among the many gifts she left me, this might be the most important. I can tell her story and pass on some of her experiences and knowledge and maybe be able to help her help others in a way she no longer can. I’m going to give it a shot.
Attached to this page you will find information related to those “Breast Cancer Things” Coleen wished she had known about. Perhaps this is a way for her to make sure other people know about them, too.
