Archive - Oct 2009

It's the fifth of October, and I've officially had it with the color pink. 

Pink, in case you're an Eskimo and don't have either a tee vee or the ability to whip down to the grocery store to purchase some seal steaks, is the color of Breast Cancer Awareness.  October is, officially, Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Yesterday, we tuned in to watch the Bears beat the snot out of Detroit, and what were the husband and I treated to?  Pink gloves on the big, badass players, pink ribbons on their helmets, pink towels on the sidelines, pink bills on ball caps, etc.  The other day, while in Austin, I was asked at the checkout line (mind you this was also on the 29th of September.  Not October 1st.) at the grocery store if I wanted to donate money to breast cancer research.  When I went to my usual coffee date at the local Bou with Mr. H. yesterday, the entire store looked like a Pepto Bismol addict had puked all over.  The employees asked me if I wanted to buy a pound of "Amy's Blend," part of the proceeds of which would go to breast cancer research, and then they asked me if I would like to donate a pound to a woman who was going through treatment.  I politely said, 'no, thank you,' and then walked away.  One of the employees, who has been there a while and knew me when I was bald, shot a very understanding glance in my direction and shrugged. 

All of it makes me wonder if anyone cares if I, as an ovarian cancer survivor, live or die because I didn't get the trendy cancer. 

I'm of two minds about all of this.  I cannot deny that the various foundations who have worked hard to make breast cancer an issue, and to raise funds for research, have done a bang-up job.  They have done marvelously. (And bringing the NFL into it is a stroke of genius. Really.  Wow, people.  Nicely done.)  I do not deny this.  I genuinely laud their efforts.  They have bravely trod a path those of us involved in ovarian cancer fundraising want to follow.  Yet, when you see pink everywhere, one wonders if people realize that breast cancer is NOT the only cancer which affects women.  Nowadays, all of their efforts to put pink on the shelves and in every conceivable public location during the month of October and beyond, feels very much like they're bringing coals to Newcastle. 

Particularly to an ovarian cancer survivor.

I know it sounds bitchy, selfish and horribly, horribly wrong.  I can't help it, though.  A straight-up look at the statistics decrees that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, whereas only 1 in 71 will receive an ovarian cancer diagnosis.  That's a lot more women who are affected overall.  Yet, breast cancer, across all the stages, has an 89% five-year-survival rate, whereas ovarian cancer, across all the stages, has a 45% five-year-survival rate.  More women may ultimately get breast cancer, but fewer women die from it than those who contract ovarian cancer.  Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths, and it's, hands down, the deadliest gynecologic cancer.  Yes, more women will die from breast cancer, but that's not because they don't have an early screening test (which breast cancer has in the form of mammograms) and it's not because they don't have effective treatments (tamoxifen, anyone?)---it's simply because more women are affected with breast cancer.  They run the table when it comes to the numbers---and I'm not denying it's a problem that needs working on---it's just simply that, well, how can there be room for the rest of us to raise awareness and money for a cure for a deadly cancer when they hog the limelight?

God, I'm hating myself for writing this.  Sour grapes extraordinare. But on I go. 

My young-survivors group puts together survivor swag bags, to hand out at our annual walk, and, this year, one of my fellow young survivors had the ignominous honor of ripping plastic off five hundred donated bottles of pink nail polish because the plastic was festooned with pink ribbons. The nail polish was, of course, originally sold as a breast cancer fundraiser---we simply got the leftovers.  You want to piss off an ovarian cancer suvivor?  Put something in a bag meant to be a treat for them, for surviving ovarian cancer, that has pink ribbons on it.  You would have thought someone at the company who donated the nail polish would have had a clue, but they didn't care. We, of course, couldn't say a word about it because it's hard enough to find items for the swag bags without spitting on very generous benefactor.  It sounds wrong to me (and others in my situation) when someone suggests, in a very well-meaning way, that because there is an ovarian cancer-breast cancer link (even if no one can define that link than there's an increased occurrence of the other when one is diagnosed with their primary cancer), we should hook our star to the breast cancer people.  It suggests that the only way ovarian cancer research can be relevant is to link it to breast cancer, as if it's not a problem in its own right.  I went to a luncheon sponsored by OCRF two weeks ago, where they provided us with a gynecologic-oncologist/researcher, so he could talk about the latest advancements in ovarian cancer research.  You want to know where he'd started his latest research program, which related to estrogen potentially feeding tumors?  Breast Cancer research about the use of tamoxifen, which suppresses estrogen and has been wildly successful in the treatment of breast cancer.  Yes, that's right: it's getting to the point where we have to feed off their research. Is it providing new insights? Yes, obviously it is.  But tamoxifen is not, he said repeatedly, likely ever going to be used in ovarian cancer treatments because the estrogen affect appears to be different in ovarian cancers than in breast cancer.  The overall fact is this: they're coming up with effective treatments; we have to feed off their research to learn more about ovarian cancer because we have very little knowledge about ovarian cancer's mechanisms in the first place.  We're decades behind.  When Dr. Academic told me he had no idea how the cancer got from my left ovary to my right, without affecting anything in between, it became apparent to me that for everything they do know, there are ten more things they don't.  The knowledge gap is staggering---and it shows up in the survival statistics.  

There is no early-screening test for ovarian cancer.  We simply have a list of symptoms to look out for, then you have to bully your doctor into ruling it out by banging the drum for three different tests.  And that's simply to rule it out.  It's better than nothing, but still, it's not exactly as definitive as a pap smear or a mammogram, and I say that with the full knowledge there are plenty of false-positives with either test.  At least there is a mechanism to find it early for cervical or breast cancer---that is not the case with ovarian.  We try to fundraise, and to raise awareness, but we're hampered by two problems.  First, we simply don't have as many survivors.  Which doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is---any progress we make in advocating for our cause is hampered by the fact some of the women involved die.  As Dr. Academic put it when describing the local ovarian cancer foundation: "They've got a longevity problem."  And, second, we run smack up against the breast cancer people.  What philanthropically-minded company wants to go teal, to raise money for ovarian cancer research, when going pink will make them more money?  And will improve their philanthropic profile by partnering with one of the largest causes?  Said companies have to choose: they cannot retool their packaging quickly enough to accomodate both causes, as they run up against one another in monthly timing. 

No one wants this to be a competition---but in reality, it is.  It's David v. Goliath, and no one really wants to take Goliath down.  But if we're ever to get anywhere significant, then we're going to have to go after them. 

And that's just simply sad.  It shouldn't have to be this way.