The Pink Tsunami of 2019

It's October.  It's time to wear pink and support the fight against breast cancer.  Also, it's time for what has become, for me, an annual rant.

The Pink Tsunami makes me wince, even as I wore pink to work yesterday and put on my pink socks with the breast cancer "loop". I knew I would be in a meeting with a former co worker who's spent a lot of this year battling (and I have no other word for it) breast cancer.  She wore pink, too.

I will say up front;  I have never had cancer.  I have been a bystander and, at one point in my life, a caregiver to someone who was undergoing cancer treatment.

Don't get me wrong.  I know there is a history behind the pink tsunami.  I know  some of the details of what my mother in law went through battling her two distinct breast cancers during the 1970's (more on that a little later).  So many people alive today do not know the horrors of breast cancer back then - how women were given no support, how women would be put under while a "frozen section" was run on their tumor. The woman would not know, when she woke up, if she would awaken with their entire body intact or not. Cancer in those days  (not just breast cancer0 was something you fought privately, with little or no support.

My late mother in law, to be blunt about it, was butchered by a well meaning surgeon and had an extensive scar on her chest to prove how men treated the removal of a breast in the bad old days.

So what is my issue?  And do I have a right to even have an issue, given I have never had cancer?

Well, yes.

I think the "pink" campaign trivializes breast cancer.  How many of you are aware, for example, that there is no such monolith as "breast cancer" but instead a whole spectrum of cancers affecting the breast?  My mother in law had two different types.  One was a tumor.  The other manifested itself as a discharge.  Her doctor "poo pooed"  the discharge but finally an instinct told my mother in law that she had a problem and had to seek help elsewhere.  Even after the cancer diagnosis, it was diagnosed incorrectly. Fortunately, Memorial Sloane Kettering in New York City (the same hospital where the woman I wrote about above is being treated) made the correct diagnosis (so correct treatment could be given).  There is nothing cute or pink about this killer.

And, not everyone survives.  Not only that, but sometimes there is a tendency  to "blame the victim":  those with Stage IV, well, they didn't eat the right foods, or they didn't exercise enough, or they didn't do their self exam well enough, or they didn't get enough mammograms or...they didn't fight hard enough.  Really?  I know I still don't understand as I've never faced cancer and a part of me hopes I never have to understand.   But blaming the person in treatment I do understand.  It's wrong.

There is no cure for breast cancer.  You are in remission, or you are not.

This one is really important.
Men can get breast cancer too!  I worry about my dear husband - with his family history-mother had it twice, and three of her sisters had breast cancer also.  Yes, he's at risk.

Did you know that men have breast tissue?  I read a statistic online saying that one out of every 100 breast cancers is diagnosed in a man.  These men are drowning in the pink tsumani of misunderstanding.

There is a high risk breast cancer clinic in Binghamton, New York (where I work) and I've talked to my husband about calling them just to talk.  So far, he won't, despite his family history.  He is scared off (or so he says) by the sea of pink.

Why not read the story of a man who lives an hour or so from here, Bob Riter.  In his 60's he's a survivor and an advocate.

4.  I believe the pink tsunami of breast cancer funnels money from other cancers.  Maybe breast cancer gets the publicity because there is a test for it or because of the horrible past history I touched on above.  Let's face it, there are no reliable tests for many cancers.  But women (and men) die from other reproductive cancers.  My former neighbor did, leaving a 12 year daughter and a 6 year old developmentally disabled son and a grieving husband to raise them.  

Or let's think about pancreatic cancer.  Alex Trebek thinks about it daily.

A cousin's wife died from brain cancer earlier this year.  Not too many people survive the cancer she had.

A co worker's brother died of colon cancer.  He was in his 20's. His sister fights to get insurance to pay for colonoscopies for her two grown children, both now in their 20's.  Rates of colon cancer are increasing among young people, according to the New York Times.

There are all the 9/11 first responders and civilians who have passed on from 9/11 cancer.  They will be passing for years to come. Where are their canned soups, marches and colored clothing?

For this coming October, why not forget the pink and raise money for research into fighting all cancer, and raising awareness and funds for the support of family and friends?

Day 2 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost