Calendar Girl Blog: Waiting
Yesterday, I was both driver and waiting room pal for a friend who had just had a lumpectomy.
We sat in a dingy waiting room for over an hour past our appointment time to get the results of her operation. Two women before us got bad news. Shocked and crying, both left to face their new lives as women living with breast cancer.
It was an excruciating time.
Our news was neither good nor bad. A second opinion was required but not available for six more weeks.
The surgeon had this to say about breast cancer risk. "One in eight is an appallingly high statistic for women to face."
Calendar Girl wonders why more focus is not put on preventing this ugly disease. Preventing... as in not getting it at all. Wouldn't that be better for everyone?
Calendar Girl
We sat in a dingy waiting room for over an hour past our appointment time to get the results of her operation. Two women before us got bad news. Shocked and crying, both left to face their new lives as women living with breast cancer.
It was an excruciating time.
Our news was neither good nor bad. A second opinion was required but not available for six more weeks.
The surgeon had this to say about breast cancer risk. "One in eight is an appallingly high statistic for women to face."
Calendar Girl wonders why more focus is not put on preventing this ugly disease. Preventing... as in not getting it at all. Wouldn't that be better for everyone?
Calendar Girl
posted by Sue Richards at 4:00 PM
3 Comments:
Six weeks is such a long time to wait. UGH.
Unfortunately there is no hit or miss prevention in Breast Cancer. They say lead a healthy lifestyle, do this, do that. I know some of the healthiest people who have gotten the damn disease.
Cancer is something I will never understand. It seems though that ever since it came into my life...it hasn't left. More people I know have gotten it, died from it or I meet more people with it.
Somedays I want to bury my head and hide from cancer and other days I want to kick cancer's ass. It's brutal.
You are a great friend for sitting in the waiting room...that wait is terrifying, nerve wracking and lonely if you are all alone.
Take Care and Keep up the great work with the Calendar!!!
RB
RB,
Actually, prevention is possible if we go beyond each individual. Yes it's important to live a healthy lifestyle.
But more importantly, we need to take a bigger view of our world. Currently, the food we eat is ladden with toxic pesticides, our water and air is polluted by our industry and car exhaust and even the cosmetics that are readily sold in stores have never been tested for safety and contain known carginogenic ingredience.
Once a majority of us notice how we are creating the cancer that is killing us, then maybe we can prevent the disease.
Calendar Girl
I would go further than RB, and say it is actually the healthiest people who are getting breast cancer - which is very different from most other cancers. It is also a cause for much frustration on the part of those afflicted.
Thinking about your scenario, I wondered what provisions were in place to comfort and support those potentially about to face bad news?
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