I'll Be Happy When There's No Need For "Awareness"

Yeah. What Twisty says. And what Barbara Ehrenreich says, too.

Nine years ago next week, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 41, with no family history. My general practitioner sent me for a "baseline" mammogram which just happened to turn up a tumor. I had a lumpectomy and then, a week later, they repeated the lumpectomy at the same site, in order to ensure better margins and they went under my arm and took out a bunch of lymph nodes to check those for cancer. Luckily, those were cancer-free, and so, after chemo, radiation, chemo, and Tamoxifen, I was "cured." Well, if by cured you mean thrown into early menopause, half-crippled in my right arm, burned by radiation, chemo-brained, and made stiff by Tamoxifen, then I was cured. And of course, bitch though I do, I was "one of the lucky ones."

Ironically, enough, haha, my cancer was discovered in October, which, since the Goddess has a wicked sense of humor, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

So, every October, just as I'm having my annual mammogram and visit to the surgeon, we get the stirring magazine articles about "Survivors," Hallmark-worthy ads on tv about bald women racing for the cure in pink t-shirts, preferably in slow motion, and -- where but in America -- people promoting everything from shampoo to yogurt to cars by using breast cancer. I gotta tell you: I hope to Hera all that money that the companies say they donate actually does some good, because my immediate reaction is always: Fuck you. Fuck you for using this disgusting disease to sell more stuff. Glad to be able to help out your bottom line. No, really.

And, as long as I'm bitching, please don't tell me that it's a "gift." I want to punch people who say that breast cancer is a "gift." Being alive and healthy is a gift. Anything that involves taking chemo -- not so much.

This week, I had my mammogram. It was good.

Now, if I can just make it through October. Maybe I'll spend my time hunting down the creator of that ceramic and pink rhinestone abomination and shoving sacchrine down their throat.