Think Pink!

Pink is the color of breast cancer awareness, and since October is breast cancer awareness month, you’re going to start seeing a lot of pink in support of this important cause. Sports teams play in pink jerseys, yogurt companies top their containers with pink, charities sponsor walks and fundraisers with pink themes.

A woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 8, while a man’s is 1 in 1,000. And although breast cancer has one of the highest survival rates among the cancers, nearly 40,000 U.S. women died of breast cancer last year.

Almost fifteen years ago, on a Tuesday evening in May, I found a lump. At my relatively young age, with no family history of breast cancer, the few people who knew about the lump tried to console me that, statistically, it was probably nothing. Except my doctor, who looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t tell you it’s nothing. We need to get you in for tests.”

Those tests all confirmed the worst. About a month later, I had a lumpectomy. My oncological surgeon spoke with me as I was wheeled out of surgery. In my groggy post-op state I missed most of the specifics, but I clearly remember her squeezing my arm and saying, “I think you’re going to be fine.”

My oncologist told me I had no reason to have a mastectomy, but she encouraged aggressive treatment to take every precaution against a recurrence. It made sense to me; do everything possible to nip this in the bud while I was young and healthy and had fantastic support systems in place to get me through chemo. So over twelve weeks I had four rounds of poison pumped into me. The chemo made me sick to a degree that defies description. It also took my hair (I was oddly okay with this at the time, but now, years later, haircuts freak me out) and put my body into menopause. When chemo was done I went in for daily for six weeks of radiation; although it was annoying going to the hospital each day, the treatment itself was a piece of cake.

I still think about my cancer every day, when I notice the scar high on my left breast or when someone else is diagnosed or when the call goes out for organ or blood donors (a cancer history makes me ineligible to donate). Sometimes the full experience floods over me in waves of nausea, but more often it’s like remembering a bad work experience: an unpleasant event that consumed much of your life but that you survived, stronger than before.

Surviving cancer makes me feel both invincible and vulnerable. When I was diagnosed, I prayed for five more years of life so that I could raise my kids, who were very young at the time, to an age when they would remember me. God granted me more than double that, and I am grateful, but I still have moments when I forget to love my life. Sometimes I wonder what I was supposed to learn from the experience, whether there was something special God was expecting me to do with my remaining days, and whether I have honored my second chance.

Now that I understand the path, part of my journey includes walking with others living with cancer. I do what I can, but this is a hard road. The easier part is to advocate for early detection and support for research, for this and all other cancers. So here’s my pitch: even if you think you are too young, have no family history, are feeling great, are really busy—eat right, get the mammogram, get the colonoscopy. Pay attention to your body. Do the self-exams. Early detection saves lives and body parts.

I love the color pink, and I wear at least a touch of it every day in October. I wear it in honor of breast cancer survivors, and in memory of those who could not overcome. I wear it for my daughters (and sons), with a prayer that they will never have to face what I did. I wear it in gratitude for my wonderful doctors, who gave me hope, and in gratitude for all of those who supported me during those difficult days.

But mostly I wear it because it is a happy color that reminds me that each day is a gift, tied up in a pink ribbon.