About a month to go before October disappears and all signs of breast cancer awareness disappear from grocery store shelves and perfume counters, from America all the way to Ireland where they are painting it pink as well. In their place, will be the autumnal hues of Thanksgiving, and some of us will forget to be aware of breast cancer, until the same time next year. It’s been eight years since since a doctor diagnosed me with invasive breast cancer and told me I was simply one of the eight women who will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. It’s been eight years since I started paying attention to the epidemic that will kill about 40,920 women in the United States this year, eight years since I learned that men get breast cancer too – in fact, about 2,550 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2018, along with about 266,120 new diagnoses of invasive breast cancer in women in the United States and 63,960 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.  Eight years since I began paying attention to the numbers, reminding me again this October of the premise of Sir Austin Bradford Hill, pioneer of the randomized clinical trial:

 Health statistics represent people with the tears wiped off.

I’m tired of friends dying. I’m tired of wondering if today is the day that a twinge in my hip or a slight headache might mean that the bastard has spread to my bones or my brain. I’m tired of being called a survivor or brave because as the late John Diamond reminded us, cowards get cancer too. And I am a coward. That I know. I’m also lucky.

I remember in those early weeks following my diagnosis, when people – friends – mused that perhaps I had somehow brought it on myself because of my lifestyle, or because I worked in jobs were too stressful. Maybe it was that I didn’t work out enough or eat enough organic vegetables or not drink enough red wine or drink too much red wine or maybe it was because I was a smoker once upon a time. I was told I was lucky and to be grateful that I got the “good” cancer, that my cancer could be so much worse, as bad as the cancer visited upon someone’s mother/father/uncle/cousin twice removed. I was told I didn’t look sick so it couldn’t be that bad, and, after all, I still had my hair – or was it a wig? I was told to find the silver lining and consider my cancer a gift.  

I was also told nothing – not a word – by some people who used to be my friends but scattered following my diagnosis. I was told to lighten up, to put my big girl panties on, and to fight like a girl, to be a “pink warrior.” I was lambasted because I had said no to chemotherapy – “That’s so selfish. Aren’t you thinking about your daughter?” – and I was told I was stupid because I should have had the other breast removed – along with my ovaries. Apparently, at 49, I didn’t need them anymore. I was told that I was REALLY lucky to get a free boob job and that I have been way too sensitive about October and the pink ribbons and all the racing towards a cure. I was told for years that early detection was the best protection, so obediently, I went for my mammograms – four of ’em – each of which missed the damn cancer that had been growing, concealed, within the dense tissue of my right breast. And for years,  I was told by the Susan G. Komen foundation that awareness saves breasts and lives – if only I’d lighten up and feel the boobies and participate in a cute Facebook campaign during October. #ThinkPink

But I’ve also been told how much I am loved. To those people who love me and who have been in my corner through all the scans and surgeries, the blood tests and biopsies, the treatments and their side effects, and the interminable waiting in so many waiting rooms,  thank you. And, thank you  to the people like my daughter who will stop to ask the cashier at the grocery store if she knows where the donations go, because she started paying attention eight years ago as well, to the business of breast cancer.

Eight years ago, we discovered Breast Cancer Action, the watchdog for the breast cancer movement. We learned about  Think Before you Pink a campaign that had been launched by Breast Cancer Action in 2002, to highlight critical questions that consumers should ask about pink ribbon products – those same questions my teenage daughter would ask grocery store almost a decade later:

Free from any conflict of interest and wholly committed to transparency, Breast Cancer Action, takes no money from ANY company that profits from or contributes to cancer – and they always show us where our money goes.  Accordingly, in 2003, they coined the phrase “pinkwashing,” to expose those companies that use the color pink in October to generate goodwill while at the same time making a paltry financial contribution to the actual cause of breast-cancer research and awareness. In other words, they profit from my disease.

Pinkwasher: (pink’-wah-sher) noun. A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease.

I was unaware of all of this, of course, until it happened to me. And, in 2011, when it happened to me,  their Think Before You Pink® campaign was focused on Promise Me, a perfume commissioned by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a fragrance that contained chemicals not listed in the ingredients that were regulated as toxic and hazardous; had not been adequately evaluated for human safety; and, which had demonstrated negative health effects.

So they decided to raise a stink about it, and I did too, and, together, we’ll do the same every October when Breast Cancer Action identifies those corporations that continue to profit from breast cancer as The Daily Beast’s Erin Gloria Ryan reported:

Companies like Estee Lauder, which markets breast-cancer awareness-branded products that contain chemicals like parabens, which may cause cancer or interfere with cancer treatment; citrus growers, who, while marketing pink breast-cancer-awareness products, irrigated their fruit with oil company wastewater; a fracking company—fracking has been linked to cancer-causing carcinogens—that marketed a breast-cancer awareness fracking drillbit (really. This really happened);and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s pink breast- cancer awareness fried chicken bucket (see the research on a high-fat diet and increased cancer risk here).

And while Breast Cancer’s Actions have certainly made a dent with these annual campaigns to “think before you pink,” they need our help to continue to apply pressure. This year’s campaign targets Ford Motor Company’s Warriors in Pink program. According to Ford, this is an initiative that is “dedicated to helping those touched by breast cancer.”