All I Want for Breast Cancer Awareness Month Is … Day 26
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US. What’s on this survivor’s mind? Check back for a bite-sized insight every day from now until Halloween.
October 26 — All I want for Breast Cancer Awareness Month is … to appreciate how far we’ve come with treating and de-stigmatizing this condition.
I was surprised to learn that people in the US couldn’t say ‘cancer’ on the radio in the 1940s. Amos ’n’ Andy were all over the airwaves, but ‘carcinoma’ was verboten? Things have changed a lot in 80 years.
Cancer is never anyone’s favorite topic of conversation, but it used to be whispered about, if discussed at all. Treatments were limited and someone’s short and long-term prospects were questionable.
Obituaries for women who died of breast cancer in the 1950s and 1960s had ‘a prolonged disease’ or ‘a woman’s disease’ listed as the cause of death.
Until the 1970s, women who found lumps in their breasts had a biopsies followed by radical mastectomies all in the same surgery. Sometimes chest muscles and ribs were removed, too. Babette Rosmond and Shirley Temple Black challenged this convention and insisted on having a breast biopsy separately from any other surgical treatment. When these women shared their stories, they inspired other women to ask questions and demand a better standard of care.
When Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller were diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks apart in 1974, they both had press conferences and went very public with their stories. Newspapers even included photos of Betty Ford in the hospital. Millions of women went in for screenings, leading to a 15% increase in diagnoses called the ‘Betty Ford Blip.’
Screenings and treatments have continued to improve during the intervening decades. Breast cancer outcomes continue to get better and better. Sarah Cannon, aka Minnie Pearl, beat John McEnroe at tennis six weeks after her mastectomy.
It gives me hope to see that survivors like Shirley Temple Black, Betty Ford and Sarah Cannon thrived and lived well into their 80s and 90s. We’ve come a long way from the whispers of a ‘woman’s disease.’ Let’s celebrate out survival and shout our truth.
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