There are people who feel that breast cancer gets too much attention.
Intellectually, I suppose I can just barely understand their whine…sorry…concern. (http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/04/are_all_cancers) While the comments on this blog are almost exclusively from women and the one male works in a hospital with cancer patients, it sounds almost…trivial in its arguments. And it may in fact either ignore or not understand how profoundly breast cancer attacks not only women, but the men who adore them. At least in the
In the land of HOOTERS® “family restaurants”, the annual over-a-million-issue sale of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s Swimsuit Issue, the worship of the Empire of Hefner as a gateway drug for virtually every male porn addiction on the planet – you wonder why an attack on the breast by a nearly invisible disease provokes a powerful response?
I confess that while I knew about breast cancer and cheered on various and sundry survivors, the disease was a distant concern. Years ago, Liz’ diagnosis with Type 2 Diabetes launched me on first the Diabetes Walk and then the Tour de Cure against Diabetes – my son, Josh and his wife will continue the tradition this year as a team of at LEAST two! But now, of course, my focus shifts. Why?
Because breast cancer has become personal to me, and horrible, and disfiguring in a way that diabetes never was. It strikes not only at the very heart of femininity, but at the very heart of the masculine response to femininity as well. But these people with their “breast cancer gets too much attention” concerns miss the point – as I did at first.
Breast cancer is a sort of gateway condition through which much more horrible forms of cancer can enter the human body. Lung cancer. Brain cancer. Bone cancer. Blood cancer. A good friend of mine and his wife just received a monstrous fright – they thought she might have a brain tumor. She didn’t, but bone cancer has been confirmed. Another friend died from a brain tumor many years ago. Still others fear lung cancer (which killed my mother-in-law), leukemia (the young son of some dear friends recently beat this curse). Of COURSE not all of them are a result of breast cancer; they represent a dark spectre that hangs over the 21st Century. But a breast cancer cure might easily lead to a cure for other kinds of cancer – it’s called “NASA spin off”. In the old days, NASA would invent something for one purpose and then someone would find another use for it: working with NASA to prevent vibration in rocket launches and aircraft, Bill Kauman left NASA and started his own helicopter company...that hit hard times and eventually birthed the Ovation Guitar Company. Weird, but true.
Who knows what we’ll find as we seek a cure for breast cancer? Will a colorectal cancer cure be far behind? We don’t know WHAT will happen once we strike up a real band to march against breast cancer!
Image: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/images04/music_man_crop.JPG
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