Breast Cancer and You

Disclaimer: for as much as Allison likes to think she knows, she is not, in fact, a doctor, so please feel free to double check anything in this article, correct her, or check with your own doctor before taking her advice.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that by now, we’re all pretty aware of breast cancer. You may ask why we need an entire month devoted to it when we all know full well that the disease exists. But when I tell you that over five hundred women are diagnosed with breast cancer every day, and that over one hundred will die from the disease in that same day, you might understand why Breast Cancer Awareness Month is such a big deal.

It seems like every October, the country turns pink. Even the White House turned pink this year in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is, no matter what your political affiliations, pretty cool on the part of the First Lady, who pulled the switch to light it up. On a personal level, it’s a yearly reminder to the daughter of a two-time cancer survivor to keep up with those self-exams, stay away from the fast-food and get to the gym as often as she can. It’s even a bigger deal for my family this year, as Friday marked the ten-year anniversary of my mom’s first diagnosis and two weeks since she’s been home recovering from (hopefully) her last reconstructive surgery.
So you can see why October is so important to me, and why I feel it necessary to get up on my soapbox and urge all of you – even the boys, since breast cancer also affects men, though in much smaller numbers – to donate, educate yourselves and do everything you can to prevent yourself from becoming another statistic. There are countless sites out there that can give you the information you’re looking for, but Susan G. Komen for the Cure is probably the most comprehensive for info on diagnosis, treatment, screening and support. Basic info and statistics can be found at the Center for Disease Control’s site.

• Eat right and exercise. Multiple studies have linked obesity to breast cancer, so talk with your doctor to make sure you’re at a healthy weight. (But I think we can all agree that cutting out excessive fat and sugar probably wouldn’t hurt.)
• Do monthly self-exams. Try to do them around the same time according to your menstrual cycle, as breast tissue can vary according to your hormones. If you don’t know how to do a self-exam, you can download the BSE card from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure site or ask your doctor at your next visit. He or she can show you how to do it, and you’ll be able to have a baseline exam to judge future exams on after familiarizing yourself with… yourself.
• On that subject, visit your doctor. It’s so important to go in for a yearly physical for many reasons, but mostly it’s just common sense. You take your car in to get checked out every once in a while, so why not do the same for yourself? Ok, lame analogy, but you get the point.

Obviously, if an immediate family member has been diagnosed with breast cancer (like your mom or your sister, or even your grandmother), you’re at higher risk, even though you may not have “the breast cancer gene”. “The breast cancer gene,” by the way, is not a diagnosis of breast cancer – it just means that you carry a gene which puts you at much higher risk of getting the disease (you can be tested for the gene, and if there’s a history of breast cancer in your family, you might want to think about it). Normally, mammograms are supposed to start at 40, but if you’re one of these people, you should start at 30 (so says every single general physician, radiologist and oncologist I’ve spoken with, so I think I can suck it up and face the boob-squeezer ten years early).

Not to belabor the point, but doing what you can now can save you years of… well, it can save you years, period. Though we’re on our way to finding a cure, there’s a long road ahead of us, and it’s important that we do everything possible so that we, our sisters and our daughters (and even our brothers and sons) can one day look back and say “oh, I remember breast cancer, it was a horrible thing.” Was. Was, not is.

-Allison

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Allison