it's coming up...

... Breast Cancer Awareness Month, that is. As October approaches, I'd like to take a few moments to reflect a bit on this national movement, and how much my reaction to breast cancer - and cancer in general - has changed over the years.

When I was younger, cancers were something that happened to old people who had lived long, fulfilling lives - a natural way to die, in other words. As I've gotten older, it's simply amazed me how many YOUNG people suffer from cancer. It's an odd, oppressive feeling to realize that people you've know, people in their prime, could be gone by age 30, struck down by diseases that the lay-person can comment about with naive confidence, "Oh, well, with modern medicine, you'll kick that cancer's ass in no time!" I mean, sure, many people are breast cancer "survivors," but let's be honest: even if you live - and there's no guarantee of that - "surviving" doesn't mean "life goes back to pre-cancer-diagnosis normality."

Another thing is the whole pink ribbon phenomenon, and ribbons in general. I'm completely torn about how I feel about them. On the one hand, I think they're extremely catchy and are thus a perfect way to raise people's awareness, and I think it's okay if the message takes a little longer to sink in than the crusading spirit. On the other hand, the mass commercialization of ribbons does give me some pause, and I do worry, as this writer does, that people will spend all their effort on buying ribbons and not pay attention to organizations that accomplish a lot in the fight against breast cancer.

Am I worry-wart all of a sudden, or what? Ambivalence seems to be my lot in life...

Anyways, I want to end this post with a pitch for a truly terrific, humane, and insightful book about being diagnosed with breast cancer (although I think it applies to just about any cancer that might afflict a younger person): Mariam Engelberg's Breast Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person. I don't have a cancer diagnosis, but I'm pretty sure that if I did, I would react pretty much the way Engelberg did, with the same questions and the same annoyances and the same confusion. I really think everyone should read this book, and certainly every future doctor. Sometimes we are so concerned with the medical aspects of the disease that we forget all the other dimensions of it, some of which ultimately matter more.