Pinktober Revolution
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jackb, Hugs, we are in this together...........we take care of each other against the unthinking masses..............
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What do you think.Is it too big for the topic box??????
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Had to transfer this here. Chevyboy posted this this morning on Insomniacs. It's written so well. It says it all.
3 hours ago Chevyboy wrote:
Colorado Voices: For some with breast cancer, a darker shade of pink
By Siobhan Sprecace
POSTED: 09/26/2015 05:00:00 PM MDT2 COMMENTS
Balloons are released as part of a tribute to breast cancer survivors during halftime of a Denver Broncos game at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in October 2014. (Denver Post file)Breast Cancer Awareness Month is fast approaching. Soon, Denver will be awash in perfectly tied pink ribbons, perky pink knick-knacks, and cleverly worded pink signs.
Of course, I am always aware that my right breast was removed due to cancer several years ago, along with a hefty helping of my lymph nodes, all of my hair (which has since grown back), and my faith in the future.
Most people prefer the stories of cancer that is detected early, battled gracefully — usually with a lot of cheerful pink fripperies — and wrestled to the ground triumphantly so that we can all live happily ever after. And then have a race.
But what about those unlucky people who didn't catch the cancer early? Or those who did catch it early, only to have it return a few years later with a vengeance? Or the truly heroic people who beat it down as best they could only to finally die from it?
Some of us need a darker shade of pink to don — either that or a very strong pink net to catch us as we go tumbling into a metastatic cancer diagnosis.
On a sunny Saturday in May 2011, I awoke to a lump in my right breast — a cartoonishly large mass that stubbornly pushed back every time I gingerly (and then more insistently) poked my finger at it.
It must be a cyst ... a sign of age ... some kind of simple, hormonal thing," I whispered to myself as I drove to my gynecologist's office the following Monday. After a mammogram, an ultrasound, a biopsy, several frantic phone calls, desperate texts and beseeching prayers, it was confirmed that the lump was certainly nothing simple.
And with that, I went reeling off of the cliff known as cancer.
A PET scan confirmed that the cancer had spread — to my liver — and suddenly I was facing a stage IV breast cancer diagnosis.
Staging is what the doctors use to describe how far the cancer has spread at diagnosis. When I was diagnosed, it had already traveled to a distant site, making it stage IV from the start. (There is no stage V.) This is also referred to as metastatic cancer, meaning the cancer moved (usually via the lymph nodes or the bloodstream) to somewhere other than where it started.
Metastatic breast cancer is the one that kills you. According to the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network, approximately 40,000 people die from metastatic breast cancer every year; around 150,000 people are living with it. I am one of the latter — for today.
I thought to myself: What kind of an idiot gets stage IV cancer right off the bat? Stage IV is for the losers — literally, we will eventually lose our lives to cancer. Stage IV is scary, sad and pathetic, and ends in death. No amount of pink can make that cheery.
Those who have metastatic cancer will never kick it to the curb; we will require treatment forever. And we must learn to live with that. We live in the shadows of a beast of an illness — an illness that, for me, has so far been tamed with a life-saving drug. Yet it paces ferociously, relentlessly inside our bodies like a caged animal, waiting to lunge again.
Cancer is programmed to outsmart drugs, much like superbugs outsmart antibiotics. Once the cancer gets wise to the drug you are taking, you try to beat it down with surgeries, drugs, radiation, chemo, anti-hormonals, antibodies, targeted treatments, immune therapies and clinical trials. Each time one drug or treatment stops working, you cliff-jump to another one. The side effects, fatigue and anxiety can become more and more unbearable with each leap.
In the beginning, I was wide-eyed with fear. I was a poster child for obeying all the rules of treatment. I even joked about cancer, made light of losing my hair, and smiled frequently.
I had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis, but I spent my days trying to "lighten" the reality. But at night, I lay in bed, and the terror settled on me like a suffocating blanket. I fought sleep because it seemed too close to death.
If the fear of death is primal, the fear of leaving a child motherless is feral.
The panic raged for years, and still sneaks up on me frequently. But it has been muzzled. For today, I am alive. For today, I am grateful.
So every third Monday, I have my port accessed and get a drug called Herceptin, which saves my life. We schedule our lives around it. Vacations, school drop-offs, funerals are planned around the hours that I must be at the chemo center. I can't miss a dose.
I realize that I am one of the luckiest unlucky people I know. Metastatic cancer kills people every day. For now, in three-week increments, I am reeling in the years that I never thought I'd see.
In the midst of metastatic cancer — with its never-ending treatment, its sometimes debilitating side effects, its financial woes and its harrowing fear of death — there are bills to pay, dinners to make, children to raise, houses to clean, friends in need and tires that go flat.
There is morning and night and the spectacular, tiny, magnificent, mundane, beautiful and tragic elements that occur between those two — the rising and the setting — that make up our ordinary days. I know that always, for all of us, there are cliffs to jump, sunsets to view and races to run — for as long as we can.
And so, as morning dawns today, I will grab my dark, rose-colored scarf and join the Komen Race for the Cure, jumping into the barrage of a color that, quite simply, reminds me of my impending death.
I'll be walking in honor of those whose last sunsets came too early.
This just brought tears to my eyes....... and thinking of all the women who I have met on here, and reading their stores...... You all mean so much to me.......... xoxo
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This article was first published in the Denver Post.
So beautifully written by a person living life to the full in spite her treatment and despite a serene knowledge of her impending fate.
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Traveltext, Guessing that's where Chevy got it from b/c she lives in Denver.
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can you pin the bingo game to the top? I think I'll be referring to it frequently...still laughing..
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And another score on the article Chevy posted. Not laughing now. Good thing there's time to both laugh and cry in this life
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I love that Bingo card. Excellent. And great article too.
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This picture appeared on my facebook feed from the local news channel from The Race for the Cure that was held yesterday in my hometown. I can not begin to tell you how appalled I was by this.
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disgusting.
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I wonder if I could put that on FB with his face blocked. What if I did that with peckers and balls?
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mema, exactly. Or what if I walked around with a big fake syringe and needle sticking,out of my arm to bring awareness of the rise of heroin deaths
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Actually, this is what it looks like for a guy with BC who has had surgery.
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Good god. I wonder if the companies that sponsor all this pink shit have any idea of how upsetting it is to many of us who have actually experienced BC.
Given the stats, we are a pretty big market share. Maybe it's time some of us pushed back by refusing to buy from places with pink stuff. It's not even October yet and our stores are filled not only w Halloween stuff already, but also with breast cancer awareness stuff. Like October isn't long enough, the marketing people are getting a jump start on it now. Most of it just ticks me off but some of it is really offensive IMO.
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Travel
Looks like me, only on both sides.
I don't do FB for a lot of reasons, but your pic should be posted.
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I'm sorry for you, Spookiesmom, and for all the other women in your situation.
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Weird I always see October as the month of skeletons for Halloween. Creeps me out that they think it should be PINK. Who decided that the month of tombstones, bats, rats and skeletons would be appropriate for breast cancer? I can't think of any month that would be good. Although I do have some very scary looking scars.........they even scare me. Oh just another side-a-f*&k of my PINK cancer. WTH?
Everyone knows that the side-a-f*$ks eventually do us in.............if the cancer doesn't. There's isn't enough PINK anything to save me.
A CURE - NOW THAT WOULD SAVE US ALL. AND IT CAN BE ANY COLOR! JUST FIND IT!
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Ha! Traveltext..you look like me but both sides like that! The scarf is gross, how about a couple of balls on a string for testicular cancer??? Would that work?? Would they even think of doing that??????? Who's a knitter around here? Yo, heads up..who wants to make a scarf?
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Knitter here. Contemplating how to create something for testicular cancer....
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QMC- go for it! You have the perfect compliment of humor and snark for that! Can't wait to see the prototypes
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Thinking a belt, rather than a scarf as with the photo that must not be mentioned again.
....now wondering about something for prostate cancer....
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QMC,, if you make it,, you MUST post it!!
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QMC- just make sure they are very small... The testicles, that is.
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OK, ladies (and the occasional gentleman), you're on. I'm thinking pink testicles, not least because we're talking Pink[expletive]tober, but also because I'm rather of the impression that the organ(s) in question are a pinky-browny-grey color. (depending on the color of the owner).
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Queen- you just inspired me to write a letter to bca.org to get involved with their Think Before You Pink program. I asked them for assistance to organize a local screening at the regional hospital's education building of Pink Ribbons, Inc. they offer this assistance on their website.
It is awonderful documentary that will shock you and sicken you. But very worth watching. I'm just too pissed if to not do anything anymore. I think I just became an activist.
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Jackbirdie: good for you. I haven't seen the documentary, but I can guess what it's like/about. I'll have to do so before October 1.
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It is excellent and they take no prisoners. It really opened my eyes.
It's very hard to find, but I eventually rented it fir 24 hrs on iTunes. Amazon has it for sale, but $16 or so.
Itunes rental was $5 or so. Netflix used to have it but don't now.
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I have horrible scars. Both developed keloids in the middle of my chest, so wish they had been on the sides. This is my mantra:
I have watched Pink Ribbons, Inc. twice. It is very moving. Be prepared to cry. I did both times.
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ok guys, my husband suggested the balls should be blue... Cause any guy who wears that scarf around a woman won't be having any sex for quite a while!!!
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Just sayin' but if a guy wears a set of knitted boobs, why retaliate by parading around in a set of knitted balls? One dumb action does not deserve another.
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