Icons or Ornaments?
- October 8, 2007
October as many readers
may know is National Breast Cancer Month. Nearly everywhere we look
this person or that, this celebrity or the other wears a pink ribbon to
raise public awareness about this woman killer.
If you perform a web search
using the criterion of breast cancer, mammary cancer, or the Pink Ribbon
Campaign you will likely turn up many sites containing volumes of information
about the disease.
We women have an obligation
to our sisters, mothers, daughters, other family members, friends, acquaintances
and ourselves to encourage each other to find as much information as possible
in order to survive this scourge.
My stimulus for this blog
today is the death yesterday afternoon of a dear friend of our family.
Her demise is certainly sadness enough except that like so many that preceded
her in death she did not aggressively tackle the monster early.
Sadly, 84% of women over
50 die of breast cancer annually. The majority of those deaths were
women that for one reason or another simply ignored the symptoms, when
diagnosed failed to act appropriately, or refused to do what is known saves
lives.
First of all each of us
needs to hone our skills at recognizing even the smallest change in our
bodies, and then seek immediate medical evaluation. It is a known
fact that aggressive treatment early on saves lives. A lumpectomy
or a partial or complete mastectomy is usually indicated.
Last year I discovered
a small lump in the outer aspect of my left breast. Without delay
I made an appointment with my Doctor and following her exam I had an immediate
diagnostic mammogram. I was fortunate that the result was negative.
Had the findings indicated the need for any surgery I would have insisted
on being scheduled immediately.
My breasts are important
to me; they are very much a part of what defines me as a female.
However, as much I may prefer to keep them, my survival instincts definitely
trump my vanity.
I wear the pink ribbon
nearly daily. I do not wear it because it looks cool or because I
like pink. I wear mine to tell others that breast cancer can be beaten
but only if we do what is right and we need to encourage each other to
know what to do.
So is the pink ribbon
a symbol or an ornament? It is definitely a symbol, one of hope and
encouragement. I strongly hope that any reader of this blog, male
and female alike would step up and begin to wear the ribbon daily from
this October forward.
Far too many of us have
died for the wrong reasons!
