You probably live a very full life. Dinner with friends, playtime with the kids, a kiss from your husband — they all seem so simple. So normal. They’re things you don’t even think about.
And then you find one tiny lump. You can barely feel it. You can’t see it. But it’s there.
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One woman in eight will find one of those tiny lumps and be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her life. More than 182,000 American women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2008. More than 40,000 women will die from the disease in 2008. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among American women. You will be hard-pressed to live your life without ever meeting a woman afflicted with breast cancer.
We hope that thought scares you. We hope it scares you enough to do monthly breast exams. We hope it scares you enough to get a mammogram. We hope it scares you enough to save you, because breast cancer is now pervasive in our society. Can anyone say they haven’t, in some way, been affected by it?
We chose to publish these pages because today is the last day of breast cancer awareness month and because breast cancer is a disease everyone can help fight. You’d nag your mother to do your laundry — but not to examine herself? You’d talk to her about her smoking habit — but not her habit of skipping her yearly mammogram? It’s not just a woman’s disease. Husbands, tell your wives you love them — so much that you want them to check themselves.
Breast cancer isn’t a disease that should be hidden away simply because it affects a woman’s “private parts.” It won’t be so private when she loses her hair, her eyelashes, her appetite, her life.
Doctors can’t keep up with everything. Let’s face it — who goes to every single recommended doctor’s appointment? It’s up to you to maintain your own health. You brush your teeth. You take a multivitamin and drink enough water. You shower every day and wash your hands after you use the bathroom. But do you do a breast self-exam every month? Is it something you avoid because you’re afraid? Because you just can’t make the time?
Women, make the time. Set an example for your children. Breast cancer is beatable, but not if we don’t fight it.
WEB EXTRA
The Sandra & Malcolm Berman Comprehensive Breast Care Center at GBMC:
http://www.gbmc.org/cancer/breastcare/index.cfm
The Breast Center at St. Agnes:
http://www.stagnes.org/svc_cancer_breast.htm
Susan G. Komen for the Cure in Maryland:
http://www.komenmd.org
The American Cancer Society’s breast cancer statistics:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/STT/stt_0.asp
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s breast cancer site:
http://www.cdc.gov/Cancer/Breast/statistics/
Breast cancer information for patients and their families:
http://www.breastcancer.org/
The National Cancer Institute’s breast cancer site:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/breast
