Breast Cancer Awareness Month

[Geico266]

October is BC awareness month. While we guys all get a little chuckle out of the "Save the Tatas" sloagans it is a serious matter. Men get BC too.

1 in 8 women get BC, 1 in 100 men get it.

Please remind the women in your life( daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts,) that digital mamagrams are the best way to catch it early.

My wife is a BC survivor and has been cancer free for 4 years next month.

Support BC fund raising, walks, wear pink, be supportive of women to get exams. They have made great strides against this cancer. Let's keep moving forward. Save the tatas!

 

[steingar]

Congrats on your spouse beating the disease, and yeah the girls should be in the habit of getting themselves checked out. Interestingly, the number of men who get prostate cancer is close to 100%, but we don't get foundations or anything. Not as early onset or emotional, I guess.

 

[Geico266]

Thanks, we were very fortunate to catch it early. She takes good care of herself and it helped us "get ahead" of the cancer by catching it when the toumors were the size of a grain of salt. The new digital / computer enhanced mammogram caught it. Playing catch up is tough with chemo and radiation, we avoided that.

 

[Ghery]

Congrats on your spouse beating the disease, and yeah the girls should be in the habit of getting themselves checked out. Interestingly, the number of men who get prostate cancer is close to 100%, but we don't get foundations or anything. Not as early onset or emotional, I guess.

I'll second the congratulations. And I'm one of the 1 in 6 men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Cured, however. It's been over 5 years since the surgery. PSA still undetectable.

Make sure the women in your life take this seriously, you guys need to, as well.

 

[denverpilot]

While a serious topic, I can't help but think of this article every time I see the word "awareness" nowadays. There is so much awareness I can hardly stand it. The world has grown far too aware. We can't handle the awareness level. It's too aware! (Nod to Monty Python...)

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/18-awareness/

Which ... I would believe if it weren't for the millions being suckered by the litigious jerks at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, who'll sue anyone attempting to use a pink ribbon for breast cancer "awareness", back into the stone ages financially. They claim copyright and trademark on a freaking ribbon.

Gotta protect those upper people's half-million a year salaries. Don't ask what they pay their lawyers.

Talk about brilliant. Pick a common survivable cancer, get people to pay money to walk around a 5 or 10K course. Keep a cut. Make everyone feel all gooey and happy they're "supporting" their friend (who either had insurance pay for their medical treatment or paid for it themselves, Komen certainly didn't), call it a non-profit. Pocket big bucks.

Ever noticed you don't see too many black ribbon melanoma matches? Yeah... death rate is way WAY higher. Pushing Stage 4 melanoma patients along a 5K course in wheelchairs doesn't play as well to the media as pretty ladies dressed in pink.

I think we need a match for the dude's most survivable cancer... testicular. Everyone on the course gets a couple of rubber balls to bounce while they walk.

Congrats on beating it. I have a huge distaste and distrust for Komen is all.

 

[denverpilot]

Stupid autocorrect. Replace "match" with "march" above.

 

[nddons]

October is BC awareness month. While we guys all get a little chuckle out of the "Save the Tatas" sloagans it is a serious matter. Men get BC too.

1 in 8 women get BC, 1 in 100 men get it.

Please remind the women in your life( daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts,) that digital mamagrams are the best way to catch it early.

My wife is a BC survivor and has been cancer free for 4 years next month.

Support BC fund raising, walks, wear pink, be supportive of women to get exams. They have made great strides against this cancer. Let's keep moving forward. Save the tatas!

Congrats to you and your better half, Geico!!! As a PC survivor myself, I'm all for this. However, I cringed just a little because of what I put in bold, which was addressed by DenverPilot:

While a serious topic, I can't help but think of this article every time I see the word "awareness" nowadays. There is so much awareness I can hardly stand it. The world has grown far too aware. We can't handle the awareness level. It's too aware! (Nod to Monty Python...)

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/18-awareness/

Which ... I would believe if it weren't for the millions being suckered by the litigious jerks at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, who'll sue anyone attempting to use a pink ribbon for breast cancer "awareness", back into the stone ages financially. They claim copyright and trademark on a freaking ribbon.

Gotta protect those upper people's half-million a year salaries. Don't ask what they pay their lawyers.

Talk about brilliant. Pick a common survivable cancer, get people to pay money to walk around a 5 or 10K course. Keep a cut. Make everyone feel all gooey and happy they're "supporting" their friend (who either had insurance pay for their medical treatment or paid for it themselves, Komen certainly didn't), call it a non-profit. Pocket big bucks.

Ever noticed you don't see too many black ribbon melanoma matches? Yeah... death rate is way WAY higher. Pushing Stage 4 melanoma patients along a 5K course in wheelchairs doesn't play as well to the media as pretty ladies dressed in pink.

I think we need a match for the dude's most survivable cancer... testicular. Everyone on the course gets a couple of rubber balls to bounce while they walk.

Congrats on beating it. I have a huge distaste and distrust for Komen is all.

Just saying, be careful where your funds go, as in all investments.

 

[Ted]

Congrats on your spouse beating the disease, and yeah the girls should be in the habit of getting themselves checked out. Interestingly, the number of men who get prostate cancer is close to 100%, but we don't get foundations or anything. Not as early onset or emotional, I guess.

Prostate cancer overall has been figured out a lot better than breast cancer. 30 years or so ago, my grandfather got prostate cancer and died. While I know that there are men who die from prostate cancer these days, I don't know of any. I figure I'll get it one day, and I'm not all that concerned about it.

I can think of a lot more women who've either died from breast cancer in the past 10 years, however.

 

[Ghery]

Prostate cancer overall has been figured out a lot better than breast cancer. 30 years or so ago, my grandfather got prostate cancer and died. While I know that there are men who die from prostate cancer these days, I don't know of any. I figure I'll get it one day, and I'm not all that concerned about it.

I can think of a lot more women who've either died from breast cancer in the past 10 years, however.

I know a guy from where I used to work who is fighting for his life against prostate cancer that had already spread before it was detected. A friend who had a prostatectomy is now seeing his PSA level start to rise, meaning more treatment. And, while it's been over 5 years since I had surgery for it, I still keep my fingers crossed at each PSA test. So don't be so sure about the lethality, or lack thereof, of prostate cancer.

 

[Ted]

I know a guy from where I used to work who is fighting for his life against prostate cancer that had already spread before it was detected. A friend who had a prostatectomy is now seeing his PSA level start to rise, meaning more treatment. And, while it's been over 5 years since I had surgery for it, I still keep my fingers crossed at each PSA test. So don't be so sure about the lethality, or lack thereof, of prostate cancer.

I'm not saying nobody dies from it, and I'm not trying to make what you or anyone else has gone through sound less difficult to go through, so I'm sorry if it came off that way. What I'm saying is that it would be more productive for me to focus on trying to fly safely and just generally keep my body in good shape, plus get regular checks as I approach the age where it's of concern.

Since I have a couple of decades to go before reaching that age, I have no doubt they will improve detection and treatments beyond what they've done in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, GA safety hasn't had as good of an improvement over that same time period.

 

[steingar]

One hundred percent of men get prostate cancer. The rates of those who get metastatic cancer is somewhat less, though the consequences for those who do are dire to say the least.

 

[nddons]

I'm not saying nobody dies from it, and I'm not trying to make what you or anyone else has gone through sound less difficult to go through, so I'm sorry if it came off that way. What I'm saying is that it would be more productive for me to focus on trying to fly safely and just generally keep my body in good shape, plus get regular checks as I approach the age where it's of concern.

Since I have a couple of decades to go before reaching that age, I have no doubt they will improve detection and treatments beyond what they've done in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, GA safety hasn't had as good of an improvement over that same time period.

Don't be too sure about that. A quasi-government commission recommended a couple of years ago that a PSA test (simple blood test) should NOT be used to test for early prostate cancer, because the treatments for PC all have side effects.

So, their recommendations will sentence men who contract PC early in their lives (i.e. 40s and 50s) to NOT find out about it until it is more advanced and harder to cure. Good luck with that.

 

[ClimbnSink]

Nope, the rates of mortality for both are statistically identical. The boobies have better marketing. Treatment for one can mean boobies go bye bye, treatment for the other often means no more woodies. Both slightly better outcomes then death. I'm surprised and overjoyed at the level of cynicism directed at the boobie cancer industrial complex in this thread. Thought everyone drank the Komen Koolaid.

Prostate cancer overall has been figured out a lot better than breast cancer. 30 years or so ago, my grandfather got prostate cancer and died. While I know that there are men who die from prostate cancer these days, I don't know of any. I figure I'll get it one day, and I'm not all that concerned about it.

I can think of a lot more women who've either died from breast cancer in the past 10 years, however.

 

[bluee]

I'm cynical about boobie cancer too. And I have boobies. But I loathe the pink ribbon crap and silly races and crap that wastes money to Komen (agree with you there!). I'm now being slightly harassed by doctors to have a mammogram, and I just don't want to blast my boobs with radiation when absolutely no one in my immediate family has had breast cancer. I have a 75 year old mother, three older sisters, aunts in their 80s, cousins in their 50s and 60s, my grandmothers lived to into their high-80s and 90s, and not one of them has ever had breast cancer. So I think I am way too young to start blasting my boobs just to make doctors feel better.

Good article in the New York times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war-on-breast-cancer.html?_r=0

"Despite the fact that Komen trademarked the phrase “for the cure,” only 16 percent of the $472 million raised in 2011, the most recent year for which financial reports are available, went toward research. At $75 million, that’s still enough to give credence to the claim that Komen has been involved in every major breast-cancer breakthrough for the past 29 years. Still, the sum is dwarfed by the $231 million the foundation spent on education and screening."

Though Komen now acknowledges the debate over screening on its Web site, the foundation has been repeatedly accused of overstating mammography’s benefits while dismissing its risks. Steve Woloshin, a colleague of Welch’s at Dartmouth and co-author of the Not So Stories column in The British Medical Journal, points to a recent Komen print ad that reads: “The five-year survival rate for breast cancer when caught early is 98 percent. When it’s not? It decreases to 23 percent.” Woloshin called that willfully deceptive. The numbers are accurate, but five-year survival rates are a misleading measure of success, skewed by screening itself. Mammography finds many cancers that never need treating and that are, by definition, survivable. Meanwhile, some women with lethal disease may seem to live longer because their cancer was found earlier, but in truth, it’s only their awareness of themselves as ill that has been extended. “Imagine a group of 100 women who received diagnoses of breast cancer because they felt a breast lump at age 67, all of whom die at age 70,” Woloshin said. “Five-year survival for this group is 0 percent. Now imagine the same women were screened, given their diagnosis three years earlier, at age 64, but treatment doesn’t work and they still die at age 70. Five-year survival is now 100 percent, even though no one lived a second longer.”

 

[N747JB]

I had a friend that died a couple months ago from prostate cancer, he was in his early 50's, he'd been fighting it for 13 years! I met him after he was diagnosed around the age of 40, his PSA was in the 500 range!! Not 5.0 but 500!! no one thought he would survive 12 months and he made it almost 13 years, but it wasn't pretty at times. I get my PSA test every year and have since I was 35 or so, my dad had prostate cancer and is doing well after 15 years.

I'm not saying nobody dies from it, and I'm not trying to make what you or anyone else has gone through sound less difficult to go through, so I'm sorry if it came off that way. What I'm saying is that it would be more productive for me to focus on trying to fly safely and just generally keep my body in good shape, plus get regular checks as I approach the age where it's of concern.

Since I have a couple of decades to go before reaching that age, I have no doubt they will improve detection and treatments beyond what they've done in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, GA safety hasn't had as good of an improvement over that same time period.

 

[nddons]

I had a friend that died a couple months ago from prostate cancer, he was in his early 50's, he'd been fighting it for 13 years! I met him after he was diagnosed around the age of 40, his PSA was in the 500 range!! Not 5.0 but 500!! no one thought he would survive 12 months and he made it almost 13 years, but it wasn't pretty at times. I get my PSA test every year and have since I was 35 or so, my dad had prostate cancer and is doing well after 15 years.

Sorry about the loss of your friend. I understand it's a pretty ugly way to go.

 

[Geico266]

Support cancer research!

 

[denverpilot]

Support cancer research!

How? The "research" groups eat more than 75% of the donations.

 

[Geico266]

How? The "research" groups eat more than 75% of the donations.

Not all. The research groups perfected digital mammograms that caught my wife's cancer when the tumors were the size of a grain of salt. A regular mammogram could not have detected it so small. Breast cancer research helped with this technology and in turned saved her from having to undergo radiation and chemo.

 

[BenZwebner]

We are trying to do our part at my flight school. We decided to paint a plane pink and a portion of the rental proceeds will be donated to a local hospitals breast cancer screening program!

 

[Geico266]

We are trying to do our part at my flight school. We decided to paint a plane pink and a portion of the rental proceeds will be donated to a local hospitals breast cancer screening program!

Nicely done!

The funds raise go towards screening ( digital mamograms) for women who can't afford them.

 

[Z06_Mir]

My momma is a survivor and so is my aunt. I've been wearing my pink Green Bay jersey every Sunday all month. Even got a compliment from a Bears fan in Vegas.

 

[PW_Plack]

I think Komen is the new poster child for overexposure, displacing even Miley Cyrus. It's getting to the point that it annoys me to turn on TV coverage of a football game and see a team wearing pink shoes for "awareness."

My Mom was a victim of breast cancer, and made it more than five years after initial diagnosis, so she falls into the bogus stats for "long-term" survival.