October is breast cancer awareness month. A time where we girls are encouraged to get acquainted with our norks, check for lumps, make lifestyle changes to reduce our chances of getting it and get informed! My gym, my church and some of my friends will be honouring this month by hosting a "Girls night in", where a bunch of chicks get together and talk about things that girls talk about, eat pink food and drink pink drinks and raise money. If you read the fine print of the fliers put out by the Cancer Council, you'll see that these events are to raise money for "women's cancers", so we're talking cervical, ovarian, endometrial, gestational trophoblastic tumour, uterine sarcoma, vulva and vaginal as well as breast.
But all we see is breast!
It's fair enough that breast cancer gets a fair amount of publicity, it is the most common cancer in women, but what about women afflicted with the other types, the less visible and as I have heard it labelled before "less sexy" cancer. Ok, so there is nothing sexy about cancer, but we all have to agree (women included) that there is something sexy about breasts! What about an ovary? Is an ovary sexy? Possibly not, it's just a slimy little internal organ that causes us some pain once a month.
For a friend of mine, ovaries mean a hell of a lot more than that. Hers are gone, along with her uterus. When she was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she was given details for a support group, but every support grou paession she attended was focussed on breast cancer. Sy friend couldn't help feeling like she'd been left behind because she didn't have the big "BC". I put myself in her shoes, I reckon I would feel like the only one in the world with ovarian cancer! These support groups are designed to make people feel like they have an ally, yet by being completely 'breast orientated', she felt alienated. She never buys anything pink.
I suspect that breast cancer, along with being the most common, gets so much publicity because it is so visible! But I think it is time we recognised the invisible, silent cancers that effect so many women, ok, not as many as are effected by breast cancer, but these women are no less important, are no less sick, are no less thrown into complete limbo by their diagnosis. I'm all for changing 'breast cancer awareness month' to 'women's cancer awareness month', followed by a 'men's cancer awareness month'. Share the love people!
Got some of my info from here:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/womenscancers
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