October Breast Cancer Awareness Hits The White House

[News]

Every week the White House features a 'Champion of Change' and with October Breast Cancer Awareness Month fast approaching The White House has chosen Anne Marie Murphy, Ph.D. who was named the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force in April 2010 and has more than twenty years experience in healthcare reform. Dr...

More... (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/235161.php)

[norkdo]

i know the right thing is to leave this alone. but that i cant do. see the warnings on the ad? things u should look for ??? to make sure u don't get breast cancer etc? do we just shut up and pretend they are true? I have read the polls on this site. i have read everyone's stories and comments. do we just let the white house and everywhere else tell these false things? the truth is all ages of women get breast cancer and early detection is simply not in place for most of us. (see the poll on this site). most of us were unable to spot the cancer early as it silently lines the ducts for years before it forms lumps and when u find it (mostly yourself or your partner) you are already in stage three.
i realize people raising money for b.c. have to feel they are taking charge of their health and helping others do so. with Her2 b.c. you simply cannot always find it in stage one.
ok. i shut up now.

[norkdo]

ok. i was peremptory. i went back and reread more. the thing i was objecting to was this:
Aside from having regular screenings and being generally aware of breast health, other factors that women should be aware of include :
Post menopausal weight gain
Family history of the disease
Getting Yearly Mammograms after the age of 40

when i went back and read the whole thing, aside from the above, the rest was more realistic. better than the above.

Here is my point. We should not be happy with the above "standard advice" . We should rebel. we should speak out. Telling people that they only need worry if they are chubby and post menopausal with a family history of the disease and telling them to put faith in yearly mammograms without knowing if they have dense breasts, etc (mammograms did not serve the majority of women on this site according to our poll...my mammogram, and many other mammograms were false negative for breast cancer)...is not right because it is not true. Read the threads consisting of dozens of posts by young women on here. definitely not post menopausal.

Billions of dollars donated over the years should mean we demand really good results. At least a few billion of some of the billions donated to breast cancer need to be set aside for replacing mammography with the latest state of the art machine that detects cancer in those with dense breasts.

I had a bad mammo and a follow up mammo. The follow up was false negative for b.c.

Advice in a fundraising campaign tends to put the onus on the individual woman and what she, alone, can do to make this a less rough road once it gets diagnosed. but catching it early is, from what I have seen on these boards, not the lot of the individual woman. It is the lot of the men and women who decide how the billions get spent: a reliable machine that detects cancer in dense breasted women, for example. there are billions of us out there in all countries wanting the right machine, and wanting the money spent correctly.

[bejuce]

Go Nora!!!! Yeah, I agree with all of your points. I was one of the women who fell through the cracks. Found a swollen lymph node in July 2008 and was told in 3 subsequent office visits that I had nothing to worry about, my breasts were just going through "breastfeeding changes" or were "fibrocystic".

I had a negative biopsy right before being diagnosed in February 2009 (my biopsy came even before a mammogram/MRI was offered to me because of my age) and the doctor had trouble putting the needle through because of my dense breasts (dense with dense breast tissue and the giant tumor that the doctors let grow on me because they were not willing to test me).

And don't get me started on all the stress/diet/exercise/weight/blahblahblah links to breast cancer. I was running 3 miles a day and eating a healthy diet when I was diagnosed. I breastfed each of my kids until they were 2 to give them the benefits of breast milk and protect myself from cancer. The fact is the risk exists for all of us - some more than others. Not much is known on the factors that lead one woman to have it and the other not.

I hear you!!

[norkdo]

Bejuce, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.
For breast Cancer Awareness Month I would love it if all those who do not fit the chubby, post menopausal, history of b.c. blah blah stereotupe...whose mammograms were either useless or failed them due to whatever reason...dense breasts, fibrocystic . . . who discovered the breast cancer later than stage one, for example. (we have learned on this site that HER2 Breast Cancer (b.c.) mostly first appears as stage three or more, after lining the ducts for years, unable to be detected) those of us who want to can rewrite the advice to women. those who fit the stereotype (i do actually) can also contribute.
http://her2support.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=51572