Connecticut School Shooting

[RivkahChaya]

The truth is it's the highest funded form of cancer research out there, and the 17th most common cancer.

Well, there's more than one type of breast cancer, and a few of them are very treatable with early detection, because they don't tend to be metastatic. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of awareness about breast cancer, there really isn't a lot of knowledge. Breast cancer is a common killer, and a common cancer among certain groups of women, but that's just because those groups tend to be low-risk for other things.

Things are relative. Getting an aggressive breast cancer at 48 is a tragedy; facing several rounds of chemo, and the illness it brings, and a 50% chance of 10-year survival is awful news, especially if you have very young children. Getting a diagnosis of slow-growing cancer that may only require a lumpectomy, but the doctor will do a mastectomy if you choose, so you can be done, and not need follow-ups, and you may not need any chemo, just radiation, at the age of 78, and you end up living to be 92-- not necessarily a tragedy. Especially if it's your worst health problem you have in late life, when your friends are getting hip replacements, losing their speech after strokes, and getting colostomies. This happened to my grandmother's sister. She made the doctor discharge her a day earlier than he wanted, so she wouldn't miss opening day at Shea stadium.

There's a car dealership that doesn't get it. They had a huge pink cling ribbon in their window a couple of years ago during "pink ribbon" season, and a banner that said "Support Breast Cancer." Not, "support breast cancer research," or "support breast cancer awareness," just "Support Breast Cancer." Yay! go breast cancer!