Breast cancer is over, but breast cancer is not

Breast cancer begins with a mbad, or no warning.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over, but not bad cancer. About 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed this year. Everyone knows someone who has had it. I used to keep a list, but it took too much time and I stopped when I was 22 years old.

But bad cancer has not stopped. Last year, at a baby shower, the woman on my right had just finished her chemotherapy and the woman on my left was just starting. They talked about me to give me advice and encouragement, as women do.

We know that the cure rate is very good when bad cancer is detected at an early stage, but most of us remain anxious and tight until our names are called to the mammography center. We are an older group and we have been here before, so we know the exercise.

Wrapped in large hospital gowns, an opening at the back and an opening to the front, waiting women tell excerpts from their stories. A woman finished her treatment 20 years ago and everything is fine. another has just found a lump and is here with crossed fingers that it is benign.

During one of my annual visits, science and religion merged. A woman in the small waiting room stood up and asked if anyone was ready to "pray for" as she said. She was a lay preacher in her church and felt called to bless everyone. Nobody objected and she sent a prayer and a blessing.

Every woman in turn enters the imaging room, the one with the big plastic and metal machine that looks like that of a factory. She offers her bads to the cold slab and hopes that the machine will give her good news. Most of the time, it is the case.

During my annual visit, the technician, a woman with a soft and rebaduring voice who looked like Aunt Bea, only younger, said that there was good news. More and more women are having a mammogram.

People know that help is available. Even women without insurance can get a voucher for free screening or make a partial payment. In the middle of these pink balloons and protesters dressed in pink T-shirts and all the hoopla that surrounds the marches and rallies, real progress is made.

But not every time.

Of the 22 women on my bad cancer list, only 2 did not survive. One of them was a teacher, Carol, whose gifted students lined the benches at the funeral. She taught them to read each other's poems and to write theirs. Another was a potter, Nancy, who fashioned plates and cups on her potter's wheel and added a half-moon for luck, she said.

His luck failed before new therapies and 3D diagnostic machines. If she were here today, she would chastise people who say they do not have time to have mammograms, or that they are too nervous to get one, or that they are not comfortable. All this may be true, but buy one anyway.

Do it for those who can not and those who can not. Do it for yourself and your family. It only takes an hour. It's not a lot of time in a woman's life, even if she's very busy. Just do it.