Why This Blog is Pink in October
I don't remember a lot of details about my freshman year of college, but one I do remember is the first day we arrived at school. There was this girl on my hall who was luring boys up to her room with boxes of donuts, telling them that if they'd help her put her stereo together, she'd give them one. By the time I noticed what was going on, there were several guys in her room plugging in wires. Later I found out that she knew exactly how to put her stereo together herself--this was just her way of meeting new people. And I doubt that the donuts were necessary either.
Flash forward to this past June when I found out that this same girl--the girl who was in my first wedding, the girl who shares a name with my older daughter, the one who made me laugh a million times--has breast cancer. Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC), a rare and extremely aggressive form that often defies detection through a mammogram and therefore usually rears its ugly head as a Stage IV--the last stop in cancer staging. Only 5% of breast cancers are IBC and its treatment is as awful as the disease--chemotherapy first, then a double mastectomy, then radiation, then another course of chemo. It's brutal and ugly and incredibly unfair. My friend is 44 years old with two pre-teen daughters. She is a lawyer who just finished getting her teaching degree so she could embark on a new, more fulfilling career. She's a woman who is incredibly positive and has a huge and abiding love for her husband, her children, her friends and family, the outdoors. And we have a huge love for her. Right now, cancer is threatening to take all of that away from her and her away from us.
So if you're wondering why this blog is pink, it's because of Kathryn. And if you wonder why I'm writing about this today, it's because she's having her double mastectomy.
More on IBC
KOMO 4 News Special Report on IBC, including Video Series
Inflammatory Breast Cancer FAQs
Your post brought me to tears. I too have a best friend who, sadly, is further down the track to your friend. She is in her mid 40s, has a 10 year old daughter and has only a couple more years to live as she has secondaries. Everything we do together I wonder if it's the last time we do it. We talk about what will happen when she dies but it seems so surreal that I cant get my head around it.
My own personal questions is: how effective is routine screening? We are offered routine screening from 45 but I have been told that there is a lot of false positives, so I am not sure I want one especially as I have no low risk factors. What do you think?
Posted by: Sarah Stewart | October 11, 2007 at 01:38 PM