We interrupt this nonposting period for an important message

[gwyn]

God, I've been like the worst DWer/LJer lately. I've been catching up on all the life I've lost the past few months, well, the past year really. I have many things to post about, but I keep finding excuses not to. Plus many of my shows are back, and I have ALL the feelings about so much of it.

But in the meantime... I really want to urge you all, female and male and neutral, to read this article from Discover magazine on the science of the Komen issue and how even worse than the recent defunding issue is their crap science that is possibly killing women. It explains, in understandable language, what most people don't know about this disease and the issues surrounding it. I used to talk about these things with Snady, and it still makes me boil with rage that the things we've learned aren't more common knowledge, that we have to dig for this information because the messages that *are* getting out there are so very wrong.

Seriously. Please read it. Spread it around, even.

Comments

[fan_eunice]

Fantastic article. I've been trying to explain this stuff to people for...ever. But it's hard because the 'early detection' narrative feels so logical and hopeful. The reality of just how arbitrary and cruel and unfair cancer is just doesn't fit nicely on a poster.

I heard it a lot 'at least they caught it early!' because people heard 'stage II' without understanding the complexities of things like triple negative and lymph node positive, and just how diagnostically precarious that shit is. Yes, Virginia...that 2 mm tumor can spread to your lymph nodes and threaten your life before a mammogram could even detect it. And that 5 cm tumor may have just sat there for ten years and never moved anywhere. Cancer doesn't play fair. That's what I wish people understood most of all. It doesn't play fair.

I'd actually never seen that screening poster before. Good thing, I may have burned it down.

[klia]

Thanks. I had no idea Komen was doing blame-the-victim marketing.

I still find it all very hard to understand, though, especially because no one knows yet which cancers will turn deadly and which will just sit in there and never bother you. An article this one linked to mentioned my issue and said they "could be ignored" because they're "usually harmless, but occasionally occur in tandem with precancerous changes in the breast." Maybe I'm just being dumb, but that's... confusing and not very helpful.

[nagasvoice]

My mom had a breast cancer that is called "rice grain". It doesn't ever show up as a lump you can identify with your hands, no matter how skilled. She was lucky--it did show up as a mammogram anomaly early enough to treat it before it metastasized, which it would have done fairly soon.
Another version of it is much, much faster-moving. This may be genetically-linked, or it may be chance, I don't think anybody knows for sure yet.
Another woman from the same building, same mobile screening van, got diagnosed with the same rice grain type. (Makes you wonder about toxins in the building...) However, that lady failed to go in and talk about it with her GP soon enough, failed to get her doctor to refer her to surgery in time. She was dead in three months. My mom is now an eleven-year survivor.
Can't nobody tell me there's anything fair or justified about cancer.

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

Very interesting article — thanks for the link.

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm going to share this with my boss. She's a radiology researcher who specializes in breast cancer. Her current research projects are in the area of improving diagnosis techniques. It's funny, but we really never talk about her work or the political scene as I'm just her personal administrative assistant back at the office (not the Hospital), and either she is never around to talk to, or what she has to say is completely over my head. But it interests me to know how she feels about all this. While there are others in my department working on improving the actual equipment/scanners that detect cancers, she is focusing on the infomatics/finding ways to use collected data to identify outcomes. At least I think that's what she is doing...? Anyway, for all I admire about her, I do find her to be fairly Ivory Tower bound and I seriously doubt she thinks much about the Komen issue(s), or the plight of the average Jane, at all. It would be interesting to know and it's another "gap" in the system that would bear some looking at... Restoring the burnt bridge between the researchers (doing the solid work of improving the tools) and the PR/front-line people who are destroying/mishandling the public's trust. When the two have to meet, it would be nice if it weren't clouded by mistrust and power-plays.