Family Awareness Day 2024 is on Saturday, June 15, 2024: Theory about Brest Cancer Awareness Month?

Saturday, June 15, 2024 is Family Awareness Day 2024. RPI Black Family Technology Awareness Day :: Home Page Technology Awareness Day

There are, as April points out, awareness moths, weeks, days, ribbons and campaigns for many, many types of cancer.

Ans it's true that breast cancer awareness month and breast cancer awareness campaigns have the highest profile of all of them.

You really don't know why that is? Well, the answer is simple - sheer hard work.

Breast cancer awareness campaigns and BC Awareness Month started as a campaign by ordinary women, most of whom had breast cancer or had lost someone to breast cancer, to raise awareness so that people knew the symptoms, examined themselves regularly, attended their routine mammograms etc. Enthusiastic participation and hard work by women made it grow into something nationally, then internationally, recognised (and then big business cashed in).

People have limited time, and choose their campaigns; those who campaign around illnesses are usually concerned with the illness that's affected them or their family. I know a couple who have a child with a very rare and life-threatening condition (not a cancer). Much of their time is now taken up with campaigning around this condition - fund raising and agitating for more funding for research, more education, more awareness etc. What they're doing is what what the women who started the breast cancer awareness campaign did. And it's as a result of the hard work by those women that breast cancer is (as you point out) no longer the automatic death sentence it once was - but don't lose sight of the fact that in the US alone an average of 112 women die from breast cancer every day (that's one every 15 minutes).

Of all those other cancer awareness months and campaigns, none has had the sheer hard work put into it that breast cancer awareness has - hard work by people affected by breast cancer and their families.

And you know, all breast cancer awareness month excesses actually have negative consequences for breast cancer patients too – the marketing and fund-raising hype surrounding breast cancer, by trivialising a deadly disease, is leading people to believe, wrongly, that breast cancer is 1) not very serious, certainly not as serious as many other cancers (many women with breast cancer have been told – by people who don’t have it – that it’s a ‘good’ cancer to get) and 2) easily curable.

In all the pink trivia, it’s easy for people to lose sight of the fact that breast cancer is a devastating illness with disfiguring surgery, gruelling treatments and so far no cure.

I agree that awareness needs to be raised about other cancers too.and while I hate ‘competitive illness’ I can see why there is resentment about an imbalance in awareness raising and fund raising.

BUT it does annoy me a little when people complain about the attention breast cancer receives in comparison to other cancers. The solution is not less attention for breast cancer, but more attention for other cancers – and there is nothing to stop any group of people starting a campaign along the lines of the one started by those women who started all the breast cancer awareness.

If prostate and lung cancer are causes close to your heart - and good for you if they are - there's nothing to stop you starting a campaign, maybe with a few friends - but you'd have to be prepared to be as dedicated and work as hard as the women who started the breast cancer awareness campaign if you want it to be as effective.

By the way, the man who started the Movember movement - which raised £5m for prostate cancer in the UK alone in November 2009 - has openly said that it was the hard work breast cancer awareness campaigners had put in that inspired him to start Movember, and openly expresses his admiration for those women

What are you doing for Autism Awareness Day (tomorrow)?

My whole family will be sportin' the blue!

What is Natural Family Planning?

NFP makes you practice abstinence during the fertile days, so no condoms, pill, etc. Fertility Awareness Method is the same method, but they allow the use of other contraceptives. The big thing about NFP is that it was and still is Catholic intended and motivated, but many people are coming to realize abstinence it not only for christians. 3 min. a day for checking and charting symptoms, hardly compares to the price, let alone displeasure, of useing hormonal and barrier contraceptives.

With 95%> effectiveness they are worth a look.