Pinktober Revolution
Comments
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You are probably right. She was diagnosed, probably late since there were no mammograms, US, etc.
She refused radical mastectomy since it was the only treatment offered. So she went untreated except for shake oil salesmen. It was hard on the family that she refused the operation, but who can blame her.
The grief stuck with every family member the rest of their lives. I was only one year old at the time so I have no memory of her myself except for pictures.
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Shayne, it (and other good ones), can be found here.
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Mini1 -- we are cancer survivors. We have had surgery and treatment and so we,are considered survivors.
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How can we make our voices heard??? How can we get the message out that cancer isn,t pretty in pink??? I think the t-shirt is a great idea and i will make some foctober ones with some of the slogans on here.
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InfoBabe - A Michigander. Or do you prefer Michiganian. We're practically neighbors. :-)
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60 month, or 5 year marks are often the benchmark for 'cured'. Not true! It's just the time frame used to track the mortalities!! For example, those of us with slow growing ER+ breast cancers have to start to be extra vigilant at the 5 year mark, not before it!
"I had cancer in my BREAST not my face; of course I look good!"
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How about - Yes I have the "good" kind. And no, I don't feel "lucky." Or - How about we all quit obsessing about the boobs we wish we had and start focusing on the ones we actually have?
Or - Trust me, even with the "free boob job and tummy tuck," you'll want your old cancer-free body back.0 -
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but that 5 year cancer-free stat that's always being thrown around bugs the hell out of me. 5 years.....whooo-frickity-hoo.
Slogan:
"It's my 5 year cancerversary. Take that number and shove it up your hoop."
or
"How many kids do you want growing up without a mom? Pink Stinks"
Both slapped on a t-shirt, with a BLACK ribbon.
ETA: Who's bright idea was it to make that frickin' ribbon pink anyway? Pink for an incurable disease...morons.
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Early in 1992, Alexandra Penney, then the editor in chief of Self, was busy designing the magazine's second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue. The previous year's effort, inspired and guest edited by Evelyn Lauder-Estée Lauder senior corporate vice president and a breast cancer survivor-had been a huge hit. The question was, how to do it again and even better. Then Penney had a flash of inspiration-she would create a ribbon, and enlist the cosmetics giant to distribute it in New York City stores. Evelyn Lauder went her one better: She promised to put the ribbon on cosmetics counters across the country.
Penney recalls the birth of the ribbon now from her office at Ziff-Davis. "You know how it is when things are in the air," Penney says.
"A week later Liz Smith wrote about a woman who was already doing a peach-colored ribbon for breast cancer." The woman was 68-year-old Charlotte Haley, the granddaughter, sister, and mother of women who had battled breast cancer. Her peach-colored loops were handmade in her dining room. Each set of five came with a card saying: "The National Cancer Institute annual budget is $1.8 billion, only 5 percent goes for cancer prevention. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon."
Haley was strictly grassroots, handing the cards out at the local supermarket and writing prominent women, everyone from former First Ladies to Dear Abby. Her message spread by word of mouth. By the time Liz Smith printed her phone number, Haley had distributed thousands.
Then Self magazine called.
"We said, ‘We want to go in with you on this, we'll give you national attention, there's nothing in it for us," Penney says. Even five years later, her voice still sounds startled by Haley's answer. "She wanted nothing to do with us. Said we were too commercial."
At the end of September 1992, Liz Smith printed a follow-up to Haley's story. She reported that Estee Lauder had experienced "problems" trying to work with Haley, and quoted the activist claiming that Self had asked her to relinquish the concept of the ribbon. "We didn't want to crowd her," Penney says. "But we really wanted to do a ribbon. We asked our lawyers and they said, ‘ Come up with another color."
They chose pink.
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Smart woman, that Charlotte Haley. So sad she was screwed over....but typical. One should almost send a letter to SELF magazine and thank them (sarcasm), for making a marketing joke out of women's heartfelt work.
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JoAnne - In its truest sense you are correct. We are continuing to exist; to survive. But my definition of survivor is to go through something and come out the other side of it. Not to pick nits here, I just feel that in your instances we are surgery survivors and treatment survivors not cancer survivors. It's like being an alcoholic. You don't stop being being one because you stopped drinking. You are surviving without alcohol, but you are still an alcoholic. You are one and will always be one. The only difference is we don't gt to choose. Cancer can rear it's ugly head at anytime. I don't get to wake up and say "Today I chose not to have cancer." When they create something that will eradicate the cancer cells from my body, not just try to keep them at bay, or they show me that I will not have BC cancer ever again, then I will consider myself a survivor. I had it, now I don't. I'm a survivor. Until then, I feel I am a cancer exister.
And please know that I do not say this to denegrate your position. It's yours and I respect that. It's just not one we share. :-)
And I think ribbons, like car alarms, were a good thing when they were first thought of. But really, when's the last time you thought "gee, a car alarm, I will call the police or go and investigate to stop the theft." More likely you never even looked up. Now I think pink ribbons are more about marketing and making money than awareness. I just don't think people even see them anymore. And forget about trying to track of what color is for what kind of cancer. I know it's a nice gesture from well intentioned people and I will accept them they were intended, but I would rather the money be donated to CA research.
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Infobabe - I'm about an hour away in the Cereal City. :-)
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"CANCER, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING"...."NO ONE WANTS THE PRESENTS WE GET".............
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"I'M NOT A SURVIVOR, I'M A PHARMACEUTICAL EXPERIMENT"
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"DON'T TELL ME I'M LUCKY", IT'S BREAST CANCER, NOT THE LOTTERY"............
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Ducky - That's great!
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Hey Ducky
I like that a lot....
And it says it all!!!!!
When are you goin to start makin that tee shirt?
Just remember to put on the back FUCKTOBER...
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I "HATE" how the "think pink" slogan has turned breast cancer into a girlie, pretty disease that everyone is surviving these days! How its become one of the good cancers to get?? How happy and smiley everyone in there "pinkdom" comes across at these rally's and runs! Ok, my pink rant is over
How about the truth "Pink Kills".0 -
Pinktober Revolt
Find the CURE
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Find the cure!
This is my second time!
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"PINK IS PRETTY.......CANCER ISN'T......ASK ME.......ENOUGH WITH THE PINK "SHIT"........
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Mini1 -- I am only saying what I have been told. I don't always feel like a survivor. I think in my mind I need more then the surgery and treatment to convince me.
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Last Year on a thread that is closed now there was a certain date that everyone would send a letter to the President of the United States...Over 1000 letters were sent and everyone got a response....maybe just maybe we should do it again....i sent one nasty letter.one statement i wrote said Ya know you have a wife and daughters.no one is immune.where the hell is all the $$$$$$$$$.Everything was done in pink magic marker.
What do you think?
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There are a few "Fuck Cancer" products on cafepress.com. We can make anything on there with any sayings we want :-)
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Joanne - That's what I'm saying. They are using the word survivor to keep us goose stepping through the process w/o asking too many questions. If I die old and gray of natural causes, than yes, feel free to call me a survivor. Until then call me what I am a cancer patient, in or out of remission as it applies. Or better yet a pharmacuetical experiment like ducky said above. I think that's my favorite by far. Read The Harm We Do and if you still feel the same way let me know. It's by an oncologist. Not anyone selling a product, although with his backround he could make a buttload of money, but he chooses to work in a low-income, city hospital. Talk about breaking ranks. This man does and it ain't pretty. But it needs to be read by everyone, with or without cancer. It affects us all even if we don't realize it.
JMW - I feel the same way about the girlie thing. I still say if men were the primary demographic of this disease, they would approach it much differently. It's the same way with heart disease. Ever compare major studies on women's heart disease? Know why not? There aren't any. It's all on men, which is why more women die from heart disease than men.
They had a Million Man Walk, we need a million woman walk to the white house to deliver these letters in person.I'll bring mine if you all bring yours.
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I don't know if I agree with the heart disease part. Everywhere I look, there's a statement about untreated heart disease being the number one killer of women...television, buses, billoards, magazines, newspapers and on and on. Slight difference when cardiac disease is eminently treatable or death is rather quick. Breast cancer on the other hand.....all I see is that freakin' pink marketing ribbon and nothing but pain and suffering. Time it's made as ugly as it is.
Edited to add: all cancers, not just breast. They're all equally horrible to me.
Don't have a slogan for this thought, just wish cancer got 1/2 the attention, and viable drugs that heart disease has.
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Statements, yes, but not studies. We are treated based on the studies of men, even though it has been shown that we exhibit different symptoms, respond to treatments differently, etc. That's why we are more likely to die from heart disease even though we are more likely to seek early treatment for it.
Well cancer will get more attention, if only from from big pharma sponsored studies, if the rates go up the 80% over the next 10 years as they are predicting as China and India become more "westernized." It's just too bad that we spend millons of dollars studying how many men wear pajamas to bed, or some other ridiculous study you read about, instead of cancer. It doesn't speak well of our society or its priorities.
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Ducky, I LOVE "I'M NOT A SURVIVOR, I'M A PHARMACEUTICAL EXPERIMENT"!!!! I would add a few choice comments to that, but my creative side has stopped for a while.... will ponder a bit. I don't believe (and never DID) that my cancer was "curable" despite the reassurance of my then-PCP and MO and BS. My "best chance at a cure" resided in doing EVERYTHING they said to do, and when the QOL got too bad for me to tolerate any more of their crap, I changed PCP, not sure why I even bother to follow up with MO and BS except that I guess I figure if/when I "progress" I will have a little warning to finish tying up loose ends (which I have been workiing on even BEFORE BC diagnosis, just seems like a little more pressure to do that now).
According to our cancer center, a "cancer survivor" is ANYONE who has or had a diagnosis of cancer and is still alive, regardless of length of time or condition. I don't really feel like a survivor sometimes, just someone waiting for the other shoe to drop, my sentence to be passed, always a bit off-balance with the uncertainty. There was a great Brit-com, I think from the 1980s or 1990s called "Waiting for God" that kind of illustrates the way I feel a lot of the time, and it really just cracks me up with the contrast between the characters' attitudes toward life. I see myself in several of the characters, and have to laugh at myself!
I really love all the comments, slogans, etc. here. Thanks for starting this thread Sassy! I am thinking of some type of collage or mixed-medium type of art project to put these altogether..... again, creative mind is just taking a bit of a holiday this week, maybe next week after multiple medical appointments....
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Linda - I think you summed that up nicely. Ducky's was my fav too. :-)
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