Some of the women I know who have stage IV breast cancer are very happy that this month is over. They don't turn on their televisions for the entire month of October. They want to go back to watching Survivor. They want to read magazines again.
You may think I'm joking or exaggerating. I'm telling the truth. I picked up a Reader's Digest in the lunch room at work today, and flipped through it.
There was an article on the new cancer cures. The lead paragraph was about a woman with advanced breast cancer who was given 6 months to live. Ten years later she's still alive, due to the miracle drug Herceptin.
Herceptin is a drug that works, for a while, for a subset of women with breast cancer, and it does not cure them. The implication of the article, however, is that the woman has been "cured".
And then a big, glossy, four-page, advertisement for Arimidex. A big, pink, marketing campaign for a drug that I just (presumably) failed.
Whatever. It's over.
I think I understand the importance of fundraising. Also... I don't think it would really behoove the general populous to view breast cancer as an automatic death sentence. I think that would generate a level of fear that would KEEP people from having regular screenings.
Still -- the big pink hope party got very old, very quickly, for me this year.
I'm glad it's over.
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