October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the publications and media have had a field day with articles. The feedback on the blogs and letters to the editors has been phenomenal.

Being a 29-year breast cancer survivor, all this hype has me flooded with reactions, good, bad and indifferent.

One recent article, “Breast Cancer Sells,” had me hanging on every word and struck more than one raw nerve.

Here is a women’s disease that seems to be providing a way for EVERYONE to make money. T-shirt sales, magazine sales, pink clothing, purses, and pink ribbon jewelry are all playing on the sympathy of the public that has been touched at one time or another by breast cancer. Even the breast cancer awareness groups are profiting by all the media hype.

The author mentions a magazine, Beyond Breast Cancer, that proclaims “10 GOOD THINGS ABOUT BREAST CANCER,” one being that you can now have the perfect set of fake breasts paid for by your insurance! This actually makes me cringe…but that is an article for a different time.

Lucinda’s article also had some not so positive comments about all the various magazines with the Pollyanna stories of breast cancer survivors. For example: “I am happier after breast cancer. I am healthier after breast cancer. How I reinvented my life after breast cancer.” This got me to thinking, there are a million horror stories about breast cancer that are never written. This is so true and I walked away from the article agreeing 100 percent with Lucinda.

But later I got to thinking about my own journey through life after having had breast cancer. In 1978 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I had a mastectomy. I was 25-years old and still single. At that time there were very few support groups and none of them had any women in my age group.

I survived breast cancer on my own and proved, if to no one but myself, that I was a strong woman! Over the years I have talked and shared my story with many women going through breast cancer. Some of them did not survive, but ALWAYS I was told that my “Pollyanna survivor” story was a source of hope. It gave them something to look forward to during the unbearable times.

So I guess there is no right, wrong, black, or white when it comes to sharing human interest stories on breast cancer. The good in all conversation and articles about breast cancer is that it is keeping the public continually AWARE. Women can not continue to bury their heads in the sand with the “it cannot happen to me attitude.” You cannot SURVIVE breast cancer if you are not diagnosed and treated!

I would also like to mention that Lucinda Marshall’s article also points out that October is DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH. “Yet media coverage shows we’d rather be aware of breasts, even sick ones, than talk about abuse.” Thirty years ago, women did not talk about their breast cancer. Let’s all hope that it does not take the next 30 years to bring an end to domestic violence!

TAGS: Domestic Violence