"Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are (a bit) messed up." Anonymous
When Marilyn first told me she felt something unusual I (no joke) said, “you’re probably just having an allergic reaction to something.” Yes, really! In my mind, there was absolutely no realm of possibility that my best friend, then at only 27, could have “the C word.” Here’s some of what I’ve learned since.
- 1 in every 8 women will have breast cancer. Think about it. I repeat, ONE in every EIGHT women… *
- The United States has the HIGHEST average of breast cancer in the whole wide WORLD, at about 128 diagnosed individuals for every 100,000 people.
- That means that if you have 500 Facebook friends, 64 of them will at some point have breast cancer. Scary, right?
- About 70-80% of breast cancers occur in women who have NO family history of breast cancer. So girls (and guys) start feeling yourself up!
- “About 1,970 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in men in 2010.” Men, need I say more?
- Wikipedia says about breast cancer that “with best treatment and dependent on staging, 10-year disease-free survival varies from 98% to 10%.” All the way down to ten percent?! That’s a huge range! And bear in mind this is with the best treatment......
*When I think about my 3 awesome sisters, 2 sweet nieces, 9 first cousins, 1 hot mom (seriously, if I can look half as good as she does by the time my AARP card comes in the mail, I will be stoked!), 88 fellow high school class-mates, and all my other amazingly wonderful girlfriends, it makes my skin crawl. If we don’t work together to change the current statistics, we’re all going to be greatly affected by this be it directly or indirectly many, many times over. In Marilyn's words that would be- No Bueno!
