6-year Mammogram is Clear & Pinktober strikes again!

Plus, a new article in The American Journal of Nursing

I had my annual mammogram last Friday and got a preliminary reading of “All clear.” I got the official reading today: “there are no suspicious findings.” I’m part of a study testing whether giving women CT contrast dye before their mammogram—contrast-enhanced mammography—yields better results. Being in the study explains the two different readings. The preliminary analysis is done by only one radiologist, whereas the final reading is done by two radiologists. It is safe to say that I am very thoroughly screened, which is comforting.

Arthur and I went out for a late brunch afterwards, at The Speckled Egg in Pittsburgh. Avocado toast, bacon and a poached egg—perfect!

But even more comforting is being six years out from my breast cancer diagnosis. In my book Healing I say that cancer casts a long shadow, and as time after diagnosis passes for me I’m realizing how long that shadow is. Six years out feels much longer, in a good way, than five years, and I imagine that years seven, eight, nine and ten will feel respectively better and better as I get farther and farther away from the initial shock of the diagnosis. Assuming that I am clear each time.

That’s interesting, too, because it seems like the longer I go without having breast cancer revealed again, the more I believe I will remain free of breast cancer. I don’t know if that’s magical thinking or common sense, or a bit of both, but the belief makes intuitive sense to me. I do not like getting mammograms—who does?—but I will continue to be screened annually, for the diagnostic information they provide of course, but also the comfort that comes from knowing I’m cancer-free. I’ve crossed over the line separating never-had-cancer from cancer-patient, and that transition cannot be reversed, which is unfortunate. However, time can pass, and does, and with it the joy I take in living a life without cancer seems to increase exponentially.

A hard thing about the timing of my diagnosis is that it coincides with Pinktober—the pinking of America that lasts for the entire month of October. October is “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and thanks to the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the Estée Lauder Company, pink has become the color symbolizing breast cancer nationally and internationally. I wrote about the pink in Healing and for The New York Times in a piece titled “Breast Cancer is Serious. Pink is Not.” I’ve yet to meet a cancer patient who likes the pink, and yet during October it shows up in everything from NFL games to drinks served on plane flights. There are even pinked out trash cans.

You thought I was joking about the trash cans, right? Alas, no.

The pink…sigh…it’s infantilizing, and unserious, and girlish. It makes me feel not like I’m part of a community of breast cancer survivors, honest and strong, but that I’m being forced into a mold that’s alien to who I am and to my experience of having breast cancer, as if I’m being suffocated in a giant wad of bubble gum. Also, because breast cancer pink is such a little-girl pink, it feels static; it does not symbolize the complexities that breast cancer brings to grown women’s lives. Instead, the pink says, “Isn’t this pretty to look at?” and as such it’s an unhelpful distraction from a serious illness. Seeing NFL players wear pink socks does not make me feel supported and the idea that it might seems ridiculous. Now, if the league gave more money to support breast cancer research I might feel better about those socks, but it doesn’t, and so I don’t. You can read more about that issue in this article: “A Helpful Reminder That The NFL Barely Gives Any Money To Breast Cancer Research.” The NFL isn’t alone in what is now called “Pinkwashing,” but I find the players’ wearing of pink in October especially strange and therefore irritating.

This October, though, I’m trying to ignore the pink. Because I now have more distance from my diagnosis than I had a year ago, not paying attention to the ubiquitous pink will be easier this year than last. Maybe eventually I’ll get to the point where Pinktober doesn’t bother me much at all. That will probably be the same time I completely stop looking over my shoulder, wondering if breast cancer is stealthily sneaking up behind me. In the meantime I’ll continue to get my annual mammogram and hope for the best. There’s not much else I can do, but doing that—hoping—right now actually feels like an awful lot.

“Funny cancer cartoon” sounds like an oxymoron or a sick joke, or both, but this made me laugh out loud.

New AJN Column

The Invisibility of Women: Why the gender data gap matters

Reading Caroline Criado Perez's striking book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (Abrams Press, 2019) made me angry, and it's likely most readers who identify as female will share that response. With unrelenting force, Perez demonstrates how women around the world are treated as second-class citizens. The book covers data bias in many fields, including health care. Perez shows how violence against nurses goes unacknowledged, and how current medical research often leaves women out, creating potentially harmful treatment gaps. She insists that women's needs and work—paid or unpaid—must be given more respect and credence.

Invisible Women begins with the premise that when women are excluded from data collection, the result is a “gender data gap.” Perez offers a vivid example: in Karlskoga, Sweden, municipal planners based snow removal protocols on drivers' needs. In 2011, city officials considered whether prioritizing snow clearing for cars was sexist. Turns out it was, since when traveling, Swedish women tend to walk or take public transportation whereas men tend to drive. In Sweden, under icy conditions, pedestrians are injured three times more often than motorists; the estimated costs of pedestrian falls during one winter in just one Swedish county were roughly $3.4 million. When Karlskoga changed its snow removal protocols to prioritize pedestrians, it saved countless women from injurious falls and its health care system a lot of money.

My daughter Miranda suggested the book Invisible Women to me. It’s such a joy to have adult children who teach me things and expose me to ideas I wouldn’t know about otherwise.

We’re enjoying a bit of San Diego weather in Pittsburgh these days. I’m sure fall will come back soon, but it’s nice to sleep with the windows open one last time before winter.

Hugs to all,

Theresa

A dinner out to celebrate my clear mammogram. Twas very nice. And yup, that’s Arthur.