One factor that has contributed to this “cancer language problem” is the media saturation of stories of women with stage 3 and stage 4 breast cancer such as actress Shannon Doherty which leaves the impression that the typical breast cancer patient is in dire straits. That’s confusing to patients conditioned to treat every cancer diagnosis as an emergency, in a world that still reacts to cancer as though it’s the beginning of the end and in a culture where we don’t talk about death until we have to.” Siobhan O’Connor, Time Magazine A 57-year-old woman with low-grade DCIS that will almost certainly never become invasive hears the same word as the 34-year-old woman who has metastatic malignancies that will kill her. There’s also the problem of the word itself. “Cancer has a language problem–not just in the way we speak about it, as a war that drafts soldiers who never signed up for it, who do battle and win, or do battle and lose. When I inform someone of my cancer diagnosis, I find myself needing to immediately qualify it by adding that it was caught very early and my prognosis is “exceptional”. The words “breast cancer” strikes terror in the hearts of many. I see the fear flicker across women’s faces when I tell them of my diagnosis or hear the actual gasps and condolences they offer me. As this particular cancer journey has progressed, I have become increasingly aware of how much misinformation and stereotypes there are regarding breast cancer and the significant role social media and the media in general plays in hyping up fear.

GET THOSE BOOBS MAMMOGRAMMED YEARLYĪs regular readers know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer this past May and had taken a sabbatical from posting during surgery recovery. Guess which one has annual mammograms and which did not. One had a mastectomy, radiation and chemo, the other had a lumpectomy, no radiation and no chemo. One was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic cancer, the other’s was caught extremely early, like mine was. In the year since then, two acquaintances have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The following post below was published by me on October 9, 2017, a few weeks after finishing treatment for breast cancer. I prefer to use the month as a platform to promote mammograms and battle the most “popular” myths of breast cancer with the truth. breast cancer awareness month and like most breast cancer victims I know, we hate those pink ribbons.

Boob squish