BCAM: Breast cancer awareness month offers little when disease has spread
http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Breast-cancer-awareness-month-offers-little-when-5820640.php
For some breast cancer patients, the relentlessly pink optimism of October filled with positive messages of how screening saves lives makes them want to go into hiding until Nov.1.
For people with metastatic breast cancer, or cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, the month can be a cruel reminder of how their story isn’t the story other people want to hear. Their original cancer was found early and treated, but it came back with a vengeance. The label “survivor” may never feel comfortable for someone who may always be in treatment.
“This month is a very frustrating month for most women with metastatic breast cancer,” said Vickie Young Wen, 51, of Sunnyvale. “The pink ribbon month seems to focus on triumph and they emphasize the word 'survivor.’ There’s a lot of 'I beat cancer’ and 'Cancer picked the wrong chick.’ … That makes a lot of us who did not beat cancer think, so does that mean cancer picked the right chick?”
Wen, who learned she had metastatic breast cancer a year after her original diagnosis, is waging her own “Pinktober” campaign complete with a “I Want More Than a Pink Ribbon” page on Facebook. Every day this month (except Sundays) she’ll wear different variations of a T-shirt that says: “I am stage IV. Talk to me.”
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