rest easy, Dermot Healy

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Editor in Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Damian Gorman, Damian Gorman, Death and dying, Memoir, Poetry, Road trips, Soundtracks of our Lives, Summertime, Van Morrison, Writing

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cormorants, Damian Gorman, Dermot Healy, Ireland, Morro Bay

2800606772_e9081a9d4f Breast cancer forever changed the connotations of certain words for me – “staging” I no longer immediately associate with the theater; “fog” I am more apt to attach to a state of cognitive loss instead of the stuff of Van Morrison’s misty mornings or the cloud that can obscure parts of Pacific Coast Highway as we head north in the summertime; “cure” no longer the idiomatic “hair of the dog that bit you” but a confounding and elusive thing all wrapped up in a pink ribbon; “Mets” no longer the other New York baseball team, but a tragic abbreviation for metastatic breast cancer from which no one survives yet of all the millions of dollars raised for breast cancer research in this country, only 2% of it is directed to metastatic breast cancer.” Until cancer came to call, “infusion” was something done to transform olive oil into a gourmet gift, and I freely associated with “sentinel,” the cormorant.

What would I know of the sentinel node, the first lymph node to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary tumor?

Watchful and still, a cormorant was sometimes the only point of distinction on a foggy morning in Morro Bay, perched on its post in the shallow water where the eucalyptus grove touches the South Bay. And I would think of poet, Dermot Healy. As long as the cormorant was there, surveying the bay, all was right in the world – a bit like Healy himself, on the edge of the ocean. Ever-watchful.

Cormorants

They fly over like flagships of the devil

with messages between the dead.

Fighting to keep a straight line

they bring news to Ulysses,

then back again to Lethe

with his letters for the boatman.

Only the cormorant is allowed into hell.

That’s why he stands with his wings out

on an unsheltered rock

imploring the heavens

to forgive him for all

that he’s seen and heard.

by Dermot Healy, writer and poet, (9 November 1947 – 29 June 2014)

I found out that Dermot Healy died, not from a newspaper headline or a phone call from Ireland, but from the beautiful tribute to him and to his craft, from County Down poet, Damian Gorman. Ironically, I first heard Damian talking about how my people had grown complacent – immune, even – to the violence in Northern Ireland on a TV in my American living room in the early 1990s. He was reading his Devices of Detachment “as dangerous as bombs,” and he stopped me in my tracks. He knew me and from whence I came. He knows all of us.

Since then I have come to believe that Damian always finds the right words at the right time:

Just a few words in tribute to Dermot Healy …

Because writing is such a construct it is always (properly) open to particular scrutiny around its tone and truthfulness. “Does this piece ring true?”we ask, and “has it anything to do with me?”

In relation to Dermot Healy’s work there was never any question; never any question about authenticity. This was, undeniably, the real thing.

I think there is a way of writing in which you make a shape inside yourself so that the writing emerges but rarely touches the sides of you on the way out. This was not Dermot Healy’s way. His was the opposite. In truthfulness, giftedness and craft he has few equals. And,though we have the work, this is a very big loss.

All the best to his loved ones.

Rest easy, Dermot Healy

world cancer day: a reprise

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Editor in Awesome Women, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Facebook, Family, Health, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Social Media, Twitter, Wilfred Owen, World Cancer Day, Writing

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breast cancer, Breast cancer as family issue, Breast Cancer Treatment, childhood, children of cancer patients, density, diagnosis, mammograms, Memoir, mother daughter relationship, Pink Ribbon Culture, reconstruction, Stage 2 breast cancer, talking to teenagers about cancer, Treatment, war metaphors, Wilfred Owen, World Cancer Day, Writing

My breast cancer is not just about me as I discovered when my then fourteen year old daughter decided to break her silence about it. In her own way, on her Facebook wall, and on World Cancer Day 2012.

Thus, on this day designated for speaking up and out, in 2014 focusing on Target 5 of the World Cancer Declaration which is all about reducing stigma and for debunking the myths that abound about breast cancer, I share with you her words and mine from February 4, 2012 . . .

The Real Warrior in our House

I didn’t know about a World Cancer Day. Until today, I’d known only about Breast Cancer Awareness October when the world turns pink for an entire month, so when I detected the lump on my breast on October 30, I should have been grateful for having made it until the end of the pinkest month, blithely unaware that cancer had come calling. Since then, I swear I have encountered more metaphors of war in breast cancer literature, than I ever found in my collection of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, and I am uncomfortable. Within the context of breast cancer, I show up – albeit reluctantly – for every appointment, procedure, and surgery. As a cancer patient, I am doing what is expected. I am being treated. At best, I am obedient. Not battling. Not a warrior in pink.

I cannot say the same for my darling girl. Just a heart-beat ago, she was so tiny, asleep and swaddled, snug in the space between the crook of her father’s arm and the tips of his fingers. Safe and secure. Then, too soon, fourteen and tall, impersonating “strong and stoic,” leaning on her beloved dad and he on her as they wait together for surgeons bearing good tidings. Neither feels safe nor secure. She is fighting so hard to keep the tears from falling, squaring up with false bravado to keep the fear at bay, to confront the panic that her mother might die. She balks at the notion of carrying the mantel of “kid with the sick mom.” She wants her teachers to know nothing about it in case they might feel sorry for her and give her a good grade out of sympathy. Mostly, she doesn’t want her friends to feel awkward around her, to tiptoe as if on egg-shells, afraid to say “cancer.” A quick study, she has grown keenly aware of the pink stuff of breast cancer and is confounded by it, not knowing just the right thing to say about all those “I love boobie bracelets” casually wrapped around teenage wrists when her instinct is to defend me because I was unable, technically, to “keep a breast.“

Remember being fourteen? It was that time reserved for rebelling a bit, for rolling your eyes at your mother’s taste in clothes or music because, well, she was your mother and therefore “so embarrassing.” Fourteen was for pushing boundaries and buttons and for experimenting with make-up and myriad ways to sign your name (with hearts instead of dots above “i’s”) or style your hair. For our girl, this rite of passage is forever marred by her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis, before which she didn’t have to feel quite so guilty about perfectly acceptable and anticipated acts of rebellion. It is unforgivably unfair. But that’s the nature of breast cancer, isn’t it? Unfair. Lest I forget how it has interrupted her life, I am considering again today the first time my daughter spoke of the cancer that came to our house like a thief in the night.

I didn’t know – and I’m sure I still don’t – the extent to which cancer has shaken our beautiful daughter, stirred a fear that others dear to her are at risk. So when I read the note she posted on her Facebook page on February 4, 2012, World Cancer Day, I realized our girl needed to tell – to share with anyone who would listen, in one fell swoop, that cancer had come calling and that her mom was sick, to tell them that being aware means you have to actually do something. She is the only warrior here. She’s my hero. Here’s her note:

In honor of World Cancer Day and my mom, I’m telling the truth …

Each and every one of you reading this note, know this: you are important to me. And I don’t ever want to lose you. Please be aware. Do not think that just because you’re you, breast cancer won’t harm you. Infect you. Frighten your whole family. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate. You can’t escape from it. And my mom, my dad, and I had to face up to that harsh reality. On November 11th of 2011, my mother was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. She told me everything her doctor had told her. About how she had three tumors, and how they had been probably hiding there for five to seven years. Three tumors. Three of them, just sitting in there for all that time, never to be found by her mammograms because they were hidden so well in her tissue. Fortunately, two of the three were benign, meaning they would not hurt her. They were not cancerous. However, one of them was a cancer. Malignant. My mother’s right breast had a cancerous tumor. But my mom had cancer. My mom had cancer. Mymomhadcancer. I didn’t hear much more of what she said. After she said “tumor” and that only “two out of three” were benign, it was hard to hear anything else. All I could say was, “But you’re going to be okay…. right?” I asked that question maybe four times in a row. I remember later on she and my dad told me about the next doctor’s appointment, during which she would find out which surgery was best for her. A lumpectomy or a mastectomy. It sounded like she was hoping for a lumpectomy, which would only remove the tumor. It sounded simpler, but it also meant radiation. Radiation is nasty. A mastectomy means removal of a whole breast. Soon I found out my mom’s treatment required a mastectomy. I would be out of school for a week.

That week, I stayed with my mom’s best friend, Amanda. Amanda is like our own family; she has known me ever since I was little. I stayed at her house once before, when my dad had major heart surgery. Now again, I stayed with her while my mom was going through surgery. Seven and a half hours. An entire school day of waiting. Then my dad – who waited the whole seven and a half hours in the hospital – called to tell me the news. My mom was okay. The surgeons were very happy with the results of not only the removal of the tumor, but the reconstruction of her entire breast.

I remember seeing her in the ICU, when she woke up from the surgery. Her skin was so white, as pale as Boo Radley‘s. Her normally inky blue eyes now reminded me of a colorless sky. I cried at the sight of her. She looked like my mom, only dead. She had been given lots of morphine and so much other medicine, so she was way beyond groggy. Out of it. And then she was able to smile. She squeezed my hand, and she asked me what day it was . . . four times. Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. I cried. My dad cried. He wiped his eyes on his shirt. We just stood there crying, rejoicing that my mom was going to be alright.

After removing her original breast and the cancer, her surgeons used skin and tissue and fat from her abdomen and molded it into the shape of a new breast. It was amazing! Today, her reconstructed breast looks almost identical to the other one. Made from her own skin, it looks fine. Just a bit bruised. But those bruises will fade, and this cancer will become just a bad memory. Unfortunately, we still have some healing to do. There’s a large scar across her abdomen, and it hurts her to stand up straight. If she lifts her right arm too high, it hurts. Then there are the tubes and the three surgical drains. Attached to my mom were three long tubes which then attached to what looked like little plastic grenades. Every day, I’d help drain the bloody fluid from them and record how much on a chart. Two have been removed, now there’s only one drain left, attached to a tube from a hole under her right arm. And then there’s always the fear that the cancer may return. Yes, her cancer was removed, but maybe there was some that the doctors couldn’t find and it could scare us again. It could invade my mother’s body once more. It could invade anybody. Which is why I’m begging: get yourself checked out. Find out your breast density. Do self-exams. Please. And it’s not just women. Men can get it too. SO if you’re a guy and you’re wondering why I tagged you in this, there’s your reason. So please. My mom discovered her cancer before it had spread into her lymph nodes. She got lucky, because she found the lump by accident and because her doctor made her get an ultrasound. She learned just in time that her negative mammograms had missed the cancer.

Many women, just like my mom, never even check their own breasts, even though they have been told over and over. It is so important to know what our breasts normally feel like, so we can notice when they change. So please take the steps to know your breasts. Know your body!

a pink ribbon made a blogger out of me

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Editor in Blogging, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Shopping, Susan G Komen Foundation

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“My New Pink Ribbon” Nov. 9, 2011

I have shown only a little restraint in not searching every corner of the internet for information about fine needle aspirations and core needle biopsies of the breast. The latter sounds more ominous. November 9th 2011 at 1:30pm, I was scheduled to go to Scottsdale Healthcare for a core needle biopsy. Once again supine in a small room illuminated only by images on an ultrasound monitor and the kindness of two technicians, I was out of sync, discombobulated presumably by the not knowing what was in store for me. More in denial than fear, however, I had not brought my husband with me nor my best friend. I wanted to keep this procedure at the level of an annual teeth cleaning or a pap smear.

In no uncertain terms, I told them I did not want to be talked through the procedure. I just wanted it to be over. But when they veered from the script I had prepared in my head with the doctor announcing they would be doing three biopsies, panic rose the way it does when the pilot announces turbulence up ahead. “Three?” Nobody had said anything about a third; I had barely begun to accept the existence of a second. Again, “Three?” Were they sure? How could there possibly be three tumors in a breast that had passed four mammograms? Discomfited by the almost reassuring response that, yes, the other doctor had ordered three biopsies, I had no choice but to settle in and soon found myself transfixed by the images on the monitor. Strangely hypnotic and relatively painless except when I allowed myself to consider the length of the hollow needle piercing my skin and making its way through three benign or cancerous somethings, and extracting tissue. It was surreal. Stuff of The Learning Channel.

Had I known what they were doing by the time they got to the third one under my arm, I like to think I would have protested the metal marker being placed deep within my breast tissue, in the shape of the ribbon synonymous with the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the search for a cure, a ribbon I have grown to despise. That, and doing things on the count of three. “Relax. One. A little poke. Two. Lidocaine going in. Three.” And then a sound like a staple gun. “You’re doing great.” Three times, I did great. I did especially great on the third one, an awkwardly positioned tumor under my right arm. I didn’t realize just how awkward until the subsequent mammogram, an undignified and ungainly dance, my partner a cheery technician charged with compressing my small punctured breast between the two plates in such a manner that the surgeon would be able to see the new metal marker under my arm. Surgeon. Surgeon? Nobody had said anything about surgery. Or had they? I could not recall. After much repositioning and squeezing and picture taking, someone in another room was satisfied with the X-ray picture conjuring a fleeting image of the Wizard of Oz.

Finally, with a flourish and a big, beaming smile, the technician presented what had been declared a satisfactory mammogram picture of my breast. There it was. Right there on the bottom right of the screen. A new metal tissue marker, fashioned in the shape of the ubiquitous breast cancer awareness ribbon.

“See? There’s that cute little ribbon.” in my tissue. In me.

Branded.

Speechless.

Ironically and thankfully, all this took place after we had ushered out October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month (although early in November all those commercials were still airing). In October, there is no escaping all the people in pink, scores of them, running races, hawking merchandise emblazoned with pink ribbons, not knowing where all the money goes or who to ask to get a straight answer. No escaping the business of breast cancer.

I found myself wondering about Susan G. Komen, the young woman who was only 36 years old when she was killed by metastatic breast cancer, and questions about the organization subsequently established by her sister began gnawing at me. Why has the foundation that bears Susan’s name failed to appropriately address the kind of cancer that killed her? Why has the Komen foundation relentlessly emphasized early detection and awareness all tied up in a pink ribbon? Until that tiny metal ribbon had been placed in the tissue of my right breast, I had regarded Komen et al with a mixture of indifference and denial, blithely handing over an extra dollar at the store to go towards “the cure.” I would never do that again.

I had told myself that breast cancer is the thing that happens to other people, to celebrities who grace the pages of magazines, to women who don’t show up for their mammograms. It does not happen to me. Oh, what a fool I’d been – duped and manipulated by its mythology. How jarring it is to contemplate disease and death juxtaposed with all the trappings of breast cancer awareness – ribbons and teddy bears and perfume bottles and cupcake liners. Such trinkets would not be out of place in a 19th century nursery rhyme about little girls, very far removed from the ravages of a disease that kills.

By the time I went home that day, I didn’t want to hear anymore of Nancy Brinker’s “conventional messages.“ I didn’t want to see pink ribbons embellishing yogurt lids and bottles of water and Facebook pages. Fat chance.

This new affront helped pass the time while I waited in another waiting room, unaware of the tiny patch of red seeping from the biopsy site through to the front of my hospital-issued blue and white striped gown. I had not anticipated blood or ice-packs or the surprise mammogram, but I was beginning to learn that breast cancer brings one surprise after another. Sitting there, exposed and vulnerable, an icepack atop my bruised and bleeding breast, a lovely young woman, dressed in a gown like mine, put her hand on my shoulder and her earnest brown eyes looking into mine, asked conspiratorially if “they” had poked me. Wordless, I wasn’t sure what they had done. No matter, she assured me I would be in her prayers that evening.

It is a strange sisterhood indeed, where an instantaneous intimacy allows us to talk about being poked and staged and prayed for. It made me uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable had I been left out by language. Language is everything. Maybe it can be attributed to my immigrant spirit, but I knew I had to learn the vocabulary, the rules, the norms for breast cancer patients gathered together in waiting rooms. And I had to learn quickly. Apart from the fact that I was well past the best age for learning a second language, I simply did not want to be immersed in this new culture.

I have other things to do. Christmas is coming.

The pathology report would come back on November 11th, Veteran’s Day, a day for remembrance. The Breast Care Patient Navigator, a new one, called to tell me I should really bring someone with me. Did I have a husband? I did? Oh, good. I should bring him along. She would see us both at 1PM on 11.11.11. One of us would listen, while the other would focus on hearing the only words she wanted to hear with Christmas around the corner.

Benign. Benign. Benign.

booby-trapped this October?

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by Editor in BC Action, Belfast, bombing, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Language matters, Language of Cancer, Memoir, Memoir, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Sexism, Shopping, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood

≈ 28 Comments

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Breast, breast cancer, Cancer, Health, John Ashcroft, Northern Ireland, Shankill Road, Susan G. Komen, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The Troubles

boo·by trap

Meaning: A practical joke. Also a concealed and possibly lethal trap.

Noun: A thing designed to catch the unwary, in particular

Verb: Place a booby trap in or on (an object or area): “the area was booby-trapped.”

Synonyms: snare, trick into doing something

“Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . .” the rhyme reminds me, as it has done countless times before, that October has thirty-one days, and it is just around the corner. Thirty one days to make us all impossibly more aware of breast cancer. Thirty one days of purchasing pink and running towards towards “the cure” (two words trademarked by the Susan G. Komen Foundation just in case you’re thinking of hosting a similar event “for the cure). The White House will undoubtedly turn pink again and the cashiers at the grocery store will ask me for a dollar towards breast cancer. And when November 1st eventually arrives, the pink ribbons will be unpinned from lapels, the grocery stores will turn from pink to the colors of Thanksgiving. I will breathe a sign of relief, but I will, of course, still have breast cancer.

I am an unwilling conscript to this battle against breast cancer. I don’t want to be a fighter or a survivor or a pink warrior. I’d prefer living without having to hold my breath every so often, wondering as I did some forty years ago in Marks and Spencers on Belfast’s Royal Avenue, if the bomb scare is just that. A scare. A hoax. In my world today, the suspicious devices come in the form of tumors and test results, in waiting and worrying, in scheduling more time to spend in waiting rooms. And they come in pink ribbons and half-truths about mammograms and early detection. The whole sorry business saps my energy. I have things to do. Mundane things, but they matter nonetheless – laundry and shopping. I like my clothes clean and the refrigerator stocked. But in October, I avoid the dry-cleaners, but I cannot avoid the grocery store and its shelves of pink merchandise.

For eleven months of the year, reconnaissance missions to the dry-cleaners or the grocery store pass without incident. No camouflage is necessary and only minimal intelligence required. In October, it is impossible to pass through the Safeway checkout line without being hijacked by a cashier whose job it is to ask me to donate a dollar for breast cancer. If I say yes, she will bellow into the intercom, “I just got a donation for Breast Cancer. Can I get a Woo Hoo?” And, as they scan coupons and fill bags, paper or plastic, with other people’s groceries, a chorus of cashiers and bag-boys will, as automatons, respond, “Woo Hoo!” and I will flee. I will feel only slightly guilty that I asked how much of my dollar would support breast cancer research, knowing that my question rendered her uncomfortable. But I will be more concerned that she has not been told how to answer my question except with a receipt and a “Have a nice day!” The young woman at the cash register is caught in the same trap with me – woo-hoo!

There are other grocery stores, less pink-ified, but they are few and far between. Even speciality stores are dressed out in pink, in an almost festive observance of breast cancer awareness month. I suppose you could call it a breast fest. Bizarrely, this brings to mind Loyalist areas in the Northern Ireland of my childhood. In anticipation of “marching” season, Union Jacks and flags bearing a red hand hung out from bedroom windows of council houses, proclaiming allegiance to the Crown. Red, white, and blue bunting stretched from house to house, and pavement curbs were roughly painted in homage to British rule. Slogans spray-painted on otherwise scrubbed gable walls, echoed an imperative “Belfast Says No” that hung above the city’s hall in the 1980s and in our faces. It was unavoidable even for those of us who wanted to remain anonymous, ordinary people for whom the moral imperative was peace. Boldly marking territory in no uncertain terms, those banners and badges were divisive, as incendiary as the booby-trapped cars that lay in wait for the part-time police officer who, in a hurry to get home for a birthday celebration, failed to check under his car before turning the key in the ignition.

Perhaps it is over-wrought to compare breast cancer awareness campaigns to shows of loyalist strength that often culminated in sectarian violence and murder. The parallels are real to me. The bunting that zig-zags across the skies of the Shankill Road is not much different from the arch of balloons that float above the “KomenPhoenix” finish Line in downtown Phoenix. I did not participate, much to the chagrin of acquaintances who know I have breast cancer. Why wasn’t I part of Komen’s “circle of promise?” they asked. Couldn’t I tap into the power of positive thinking? Why do I have to be so negative about breast cancer? Come on! Can’t you ferret out a silver lining? Make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

“Imagine a life without breast cancer!” the Susan G. Komen Foundation urges. Alright. I imagine it every morning when I wake up or when I push to the back of my mind the possibility that the twinge in my hip is a harbinger of recurrence. I imagined it during an unguarded moment in Bed, Bath and Beyond, the sole item on my agenda, a new duvet cover. I had barely crossed the threshold, when I was told to Fight like a Girl:

Even the tic tacs on display were pink, as was the pasta and the over-priced machine used to make it. I did my due diligence and visited the The Pasta Shoppe website, where I learned that 10% of proceeds from the sale of fun-shaped pasta will go directly to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Susan G. Komen was only 36 years old when she was killed by metastatic breast cancer In the blink of an eye, just three years, it ravaged her body. The organization subsequently established by her sister, however, has failed to appropriately address the kind of cancer that killed her. Instead, the Komen foundation has relentlessly emphasized early detection and awareness. Sealed it with a pink ribbon, it is just not good enough. Not for me. Not for my daughter. Nor yours.

What would Susan G. Komen say about our progress, or Rachel Carson, who fifty years ago, warned us about pesticides and their link to cancer. Breast cancer killed her too. She would have something to say, I know, about last year’s limited edition pink ribbon tic tacs. While I do not know how much of the tic tac proceeds went towards breast cancer research, I know they contain corn gluten, which is cause for concern. For Susan and for Rachel, for you and for me, Breast Cancer Action urges us to ask these Critical Questions Before You Buy Pink:

Does any money from this purchase go to support breast cancer programs? How much?
What organization will get the money? What will they do with the funds, and how do these programs turn the tide of the breast cancer epidemic?
Is there a “cap” on the amount the company will donate? Has this maximum donation already been met? Can you tell?
Does this purchase put you or someone you love at risk for exposure to toxins linked to breast cancer? What is the company doing to ensure that its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

Breast cancer can no longer be covered up with pink ribbon purchases that manipulate us into feeling good about ourselves. It is an epidemic but it has been trivialized, glamorized, feminized. In October, it is more about the boobies and less about the disease. The slogans and the pink wristbands, the trappings of breast cancer become fashion accessories. For thirty-one days, we are told “to save the tatas” and reminded to “feel the boobies.” Baby-talk, sugar and spice and all things nice, the stuff of fairy-tales. Even the President of the United States will sport a pink breast cancer awareness bracelet.

I may be way off the mark, but somehow I cannot imagine our nation in the grip of a “Feel my Balls” campaign. Can you? In 2013, America is still confounded by sex and gender; thus, guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, ring hollow. Somewhere within the ‘Spaghetti Junction’ of stories that spin to advance political agendas and generate massive profits, lies the truth about the way things are and how they appear to be. A glamorous pink ribbon wrapped around an Estee Lauder model seems more socially palatable than a bald and fragile, vomiting cancer patient in the throes of yet another grueling, poisonous chemotherapy treatment. And then there are the men with breast cancer. What about them? What about the families of over 2,000 men who died from breast cancer in 2012?

Confronting the chilling reality of breast cancer is non-negotiable. It is time to ask the questions that will quell the rising tide and to demand answers, to hold accountable those in power to mandate mandate meaningful action, beyond the breasts and into research of the cancer that kills.

It was a decade ago when BBC News reported that then United States Attorney General, John Ashcroft, asked the United States Department of Justice to shell out $8,000 for drapes to cover up the exposed right breast of The Spirit of Justice statue. The offending art-deco figure was often photographed behind him while he spoke to the media. Was it too life-like? Too real? Too much woman for him? Would a pink ribbon in front of the White House have been more acceptable? Regrettably, I think it might.

Breast cancer is ugly, and it hurts. Awareness campaigns hurt too, especially when they focus on the same old stories of early detection and treatment regimens that have been prescribed for decades – some combination of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy. Especially when such campaigns focus on everything other than what must be done to figure out what causes breast cancer in the first place, how to prevent it, how to stop it from metastasizing. What I wish I had known before running all those races and believing that the mammogram was the perfect test is what METAvivor President, CJ (Dian) Coreliussen-James warns:

“People do not realize that metastatic breast cancer is widespread and deadly, and that it strikes on whim and takes 41,000 American lives every year. Survivors think they are safe because they are 5 years out … or were diagnosed early … or were told they are ‘cured,’ but MBC plays by its own rules.People diagnosed at stage 0 as well as 30-year survivors can and do metastasize. You feel great one day and the next day learn you have MBC. Your life can change that fast.

So what will you do this October? How will you navigate the sophisticated booby-traps all around you? Be vigilant. Don’t fall for it just because of the nice pink ribbon. Ask questions.

It’s not all about the boobs . . .