[Laurel]

"Call off the relays and pink products...."

We're joking about the ignorance of the press here, no one more than me, but really what was written in this little snippet is a disservice to women (and the rare "bird" men) who draw the breast cancer card. What the article seems to promote is a glib overview of breast cancer, something I confess I once bought into. What I mean to say is this: when I was diagnosed I naively thought I'd have a lumpectomy, maybe some radiation, and I'd be on my merry way. Well why not? After all I got my mammo faithfully every year without fail, didn't I? Surely I caught it early, right? Early means "curable," right?

Wrong. Perhaps in the case of triple negs who pass the 3 year mark there is a good chance of the beast never returning. For ER pos folks recurrence is always a lovely possibility. And Her-2s? Who really knows? Looks darn promising since the advent of Herceptin, but I have not had anyone makin' me any guarantees. Has your onc promised you on a stack of bibles that your cancer is history, kaput, obliterated, crushed, destroyed, killed, annihilated, exterminated, cured...?

The point is breast cancer is a beast that kills. Still kills. Media articles, however intentioned, give women, especially young women, the false impression that BC isn't the serious disease that it so clearly is.

Ok, and well, that just p---es me off.

Thanks for listening. I feel much better now and so I'll sign off satisfied that the press are a bunch of a-holes and I have alerted the sleeping world of their collective stupidity.