Breast Cancer Awareness Month – If You’re Not Affected Yet, Be Thankful…

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Once upon a time, I knew this fact, but didn’t really pay attention.

Once upon a time, breast cancer wasn’t stalking the person I love most in the world. Now that my wife is at high, high risk, I’m acutely aware of what this month, and every effort towards finding a cure, really means.

It means that one day, bright and happy young women in their thirties won’t have to face the idea of having both of their breasts removed as a preventative measure.

It means that one day, maybe women in their forties won’t be terrified of what they might find if they do a breast self-exam in the shower.

It means that one day, women in their fifties won’t dread their annual mammography appointment.

It means that one day, little girls won’t have to see their mothers suffer and secretly wonder if they are in store for the same fate.

It means that one day, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, hours of counseling, weeks of feeling like a societal outcast due to physical changes that can’t be controlled, will all be a distant and unpleasant memory.

It means that one day, we’ll be able to stop burying so damn many of the women we love because we’ll have found a reliable cure that takes the fight to the illness.

Not a breast cancer survivor or patient? Not a family member or friend of someone who is? Good for you. Hope it stays that way.

And the best way to make sure that happens is to support and give to the cause.