Are You Doing Your Part For Breast Cancer?

Many of you have recently read my post about my grandmother, written after her death in January of this year. Your kind words are comforting. Thank you. I would like to invite you into more of her, and my, story. (To the best of my recollection, that is.)

My Granny was diagnosed with breast cancer at 93. My aunt was her primary caretaker and discovered that she was bleeding from the tumor, which was roughly the size of a tube of toothpaste. When asked why she hadn't told anyone of the lump before that, Granny replied that she was too old for chemo and radiation. She didn't want the medicine to make her 'sick.'

She was finally convinced that she should at least have surgery to remove the tumor. Upon her admittance to the hospital she was asked when the last time she was in the hospital. Granny looked up at my aunt and said, "How old are you?"

She had not been hospitalized since her youngest child was born, some 52 years before.

The surgery was successful. The doctors and nurses were astounded that at 93 she was healing much better than many women even half her age. As a family, we were lucky. Breast cancer did not claim my Granny. She took her 5 years of tamoxifin and was declared disease free at 98. (If you've read the above link, you know that she lived to be 101, and died peacefully in her sleep.)

Again, our family is lucky. We all know of a family that has been torn apart by this disease. Perhaps it is your own. Now, thanks to Dr. Susan Love, we can ALL be a part of the research to not only find a cure, but find the cause of this disease. If you saw NBC Nightly News the other night (Wednesday, maybe?) you were able to see her talk to Brian Williams about their quest for 1 MILLION WOMEN to join in to help researchers.

The Army of Women website says this:

Our revolutionary initiative has two key goals:

• To recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all.
• To challenge the scientific community to expand its current focus to include breast cancer prevention research conducted on healthy women.

Are you willing to join? Even with one diagnosis my 'family' risk is relatively low but I've already put my name in the hat. Maybe I can contribute, maybe I can't. But wouldn't you rather have made the effort?

Pass it around. Let's help Dr. Love reach her 1 million women in record time.

There's no time to loose.