[rachelhmmd]

I am not Stage 4, yet. But I know I may be one day. That letter so articulately expressed the problem.

Two years ago I participated in a Survivor Ceremony. While everyone else swayed to the song, I found myself getting angry. There was all this hoopla for longer term survivors, as if one should be applauded for being "lucky enough" to have a less aggressive tumor. Breast cancer is not one beast, but many; it is a very heterogeneous. We are not all in the same boat.

The week I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so too was a colleague of my husband's. We became fast friends. Her cancer was super aggressive, and within 5 months she was dead. She was a single mom, and left behind three teenaged kids with no plans in place. It was terrible and sitting in the ICU as she died was one of the hardest things I've ever done, especially given my extreme fears about my own mortality. After her death, I tried to process it in my breast cancer support group. I was shushed down, because others in the group found it too upsetting. They wanted to talk about knitting pink hats. It was ok to talk about lymphedema or side effects to chemo or types of reconstructive surgery or bone density. It was definitely NOT ok to talk about dying.

I agree that we women with breast cancer do ourselves the greatest disservice by focusing on the PINK and denying the BLACK. The real fight is curing metastatic illness, so that when it comes to us, our daughters, our sisters, it will not be our last enemy. I know that it is hard to face the real source of our terror, that we naturally employ denial, avoidance, and even reaction formation ("Let's look at the GIFTS cancer brings us...YIKES!). But all of that candy coating does't antidote the poison.