Early detection is key to fighting cancer

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Updated: November 15, 2011 10:36AM

Pink used to be favored for frilly bed covers, Sunday dresses, and satin hair bows.

Now, it is the color of breast cancer awareness.

Because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, pink will be everywhere. As a breast cancer survivor, I can understand how the color can be hard on people who are battling other forms of cancer.

For instance, although there are campaigns to raise awareness about colon and lung cancer, nothing compares to the exposure given breast cancer — not even the heightened campaigns that target prostate cancer in men.

So, it is not my intention to rub it in.

Still, breast cancer is the most common cancer found in U.S. women. In fact, if you get eight friends together for a rise-and-fly Bid Whist game, one of those friends will one day be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Additionally, although more white women are diagnosed with the disease, twice as many black women who have breast cancer die from it. Clearly, too many black women are still getting to the doctor too late.

Advocates believe that African-American women mistakenly believe they won’t get the disease, are less likely to get mammograms or don’t have access to adequate health care.

Some breast cancer organizations, such as The Sister’s Network headquartered in Houston, Texas, specifically target black women. Most of these organizations were founded by survivors who wanted to give back after their own ordeal.

It has been nearly 2½ years since a breast cancer diagnosis altered my life.

“So far, so good,” I say when people ask how I’m doing. What they’re really asking is if the cancer has returned. Frankly, I’m still years away from not thinking about that question.

In fact, there are days when I wish I was in the medical profession or the ministry, so that on some level I would understand where this killer came from.

Obviously, I know we all have to leave here with something.

But after my late niece passed away from breast cancer in the prime of her life — leaving behind two daughters — I asked the same question everyone asks: “Why, God?”

After my niece’s death, I made it a point to walk in the Annual “Y-Me Mother’s Day” event in Grant Park and to support other activities that raise awareness in the African-American community.

I was even one of the regular participants at Y-Me’s fund-raising luncheon.

That is where I met Dr. Sandy Goldberg, a breast cancer survivor and founder of A Silver Lining Foundation.

Goldberg’s organization has helped 450,000 access medical services needed to detect and treat breast cancer.

But at the time Goldberg and I walked the runway, I had no inkling that one day I would be sitting across from her at lunch swapping stories about the ins and outs of our diagnosis and treatment.

Women who don’t belong to this sisterhood may call us brave or courageous.

But we know better. We were terrified. Only God and the miracle of early detection allowed either of us to go on with our lives.

Today, because of the money raised by organizations like Susan G. Komen, women can take advantage of treatment options that go beyond chemotherapy and radiation.

Still, young single mothers on the South and West Sides who are struggling to take care of their children might not know any of this. They may still think a breast cancer diagnosis is a death sentence.

Because these women are often bouncing from one crisis to another, they mistakenly think they don’t have the time or the resources to get a screening.

That’s the woman who needs to be personally reminded, especially this month, to make and keep an appointment for a mammogram.

Because breast cancer organizations have done a superb job getting the word out that early detection saves lives, a lot of women have made getting a mammogram a routine.

But, unfortunately, some women are still too scared to follow up if something suspicious does show up.

To them I say, open your eyes. See the faces of survival. See the pink with a childlike wonder.

For it is a beacon that lets sisters know they, too, can survive.