Today is the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This year I won’t be able to buy anything to help support research or foundations. But I’ve already done my part. I talk about cancer and let people know what it’s like and that it didn’t show up on a mammogram even though I could feel the tumor. My needle biopsy was negative but I wanted it out, I couldn’t have a foreign growth sitting in my chest. So I was quite shocked a week after the surgery to be told I had cancer. My life has been very different since that late Thursday afternoon, some if it very bad, and some of it amazing. The past three months have been the worst, but things seem to be getting better. Yes, what I’m going through now is worse than chemo in 2005. Because chemo had an end date, and this does not.
If you do make purchases to support Breast Cancer look carefully at the tags and signs. Some companies bring out merchandise with a pink ribbon but no money is going to charity. I think it’s despicable but believe me, now that you know about it, you’ll see it in drugstores and supermarkets.
I’m probably being placed on somebody’s watch list as you read this, because I made out a check to the Sutter Medical Thieves and mailed it off. In July I mailed a check made out to the City of Oakland Parking Thieves. I got the idea many years ago from an Herb Caen column in the SF Chronicle. Someone had made a check out to PG&E using derogatory words that started with the letters PG&E; I’ve long forgotten what it said but remember the sentiment. When I was surviving cancer treatment I decided to become more of an activist in causes where I felt bureaucracy and big business were squashing people. I have done better since then of speaking up more, but not enough. I still wallow in my own self pity about how much being sick cost me. I support civil disobedience but not any type of destruction of property. I’m still paying for radiology and lab work and now they are charging me interest. Anything to do with health insurance and bills frustrates me and makes me cry.
