As I lay dying
By LAURIE BECKLUND
I am dying, literally, at my home in Hollywood, of metastatic breast cancer, the only kind of breast cancer that kills. For six years I've known I was going to die. I just didn't know when.
Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, a new, deadly diagnosis gave me a deadline. No doctor would promise me I'd make it to 2015.
Promise me, I told my friends and family, that you'll never say that I died after fighting a courageous battle with breast cancer. This tired, trite line dishonors the dead and the dying by suggesting that we, the victims, are responsible for our deaths or that the fight we were in was ever fair.
Promise me you'll never wear a pink ribbon in my name or drop a dollar into a bucket that goes to breast cancer awareness for early detection for a cure, the mantra of fund-raising juggernaut Susan G. Komen, which has propagated a distorted message about breast cancer and how to cure it.
more
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-becklund-breast-cancer-komen-20150222-story.html#page=1
Laurie Becklund, a former LA Times staff writer, died Feb. 8. She wrote this over the last few months.
RIP
marym625
(17,997 posts)Stargazer09
(2,132 posts)I hope that someone will create that database. It's desperately needed. NOW.
PumpkinAle
(1,210 posts)https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/create-database-help-doctors-treat-breast-cancer-patients-require-charities-spend-donations-research/NbMmGnHD
ASHNIB
AT 10:29 AM FEBRUARY 22, 2015
Please sign - there are only 10 signatures so far.
Response to PumpkinAle (Reply #3)
guyton This message was self-deleted by its author.
Hekate
(91,042 posts)Paper Roses
(7,475 posts)All of us are vulnerable. All of us live in fear. So many causes, so little help when the curtain falls.
As I cope with several serious health issues, I wonder how I will cope when the doctor tells me that there is nothing else. Will I be as brave? Who knows.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)is Breast Cancer Action out of San Francisco.
You can join their organization at http://bcaction.org/
They too complain about how Susan G Komen accepts huge amounts of money, but little of the donations are sent off to the types of researchers who would actually perhaps make a dent in the disease.
And the absolute absurdity of companies that produce toxic products but can put that pink ribbon on their products so we consumers can feel good about the toxins while our bodies have to dealt with the injuries caused by the products.
Omaha Steve
(99,879 posts)I quit supporting her, not the cause.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Laurie
Maybe someday the oligarchs and their minions
will stop poisoning us and the earth so our bodies no longer accept cancer as a living destructive force in our bodies. I, as a survivor of breast cancer, say to them stop your madness! Let us LIVE our lives in peace, compassion and health!
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)She was given DES in 1957/8 while pregnant with me.
I just mentioned to a friend how many obits read, "a courageous battle with cancer" lately.
hopemountain
(3,919 posts)for sharing your truth with us. rest in peace, laurie becklund.
my grandma died an excruciating death from metastatic cancer. she never told anyone until the time came she could not get out of her bed. she refused any treatment or hospital care. we all did what we could to keep her comfortable. my mother was the person who daily took loving care of her mother-in-law.
personally, i share laurie becklund's perception of the k foundation. i reject breast cancer. "cancel!" i shout "cancel!" - every time i see that fucking pink ribbon and the k name. i have never donated a cent to them.
i believe more in healthy lifestyle prevention practices and thousands of years of proven indigenous alternative therapies than anything a pharmaceutical corporation "patents".
petition signed.
locks
(2,012 posts)I feel very fortunate to have survived two "bouts" with breast cancer. But I also feel it is one of the great tragedies of our time that after all the years of research and dollars spent we are not even close to a "cure." Did I or my doctors do something right that Laurie Becklund or her doctors didn't do? How would we know? We're told "early detection" helps; I had mammograms, sonograms, pet scans and biopsies before the second cancer was spotted. "Don't smoke". I have never smoked. "Genetic make-up." No one in my family has had breast cancer as far as I know. "Toxic environment." I have lived in one of the cleanest environments in the US for the last 40 years. "Hormonal treatment will prevent recurrence." It didn't. And so on.
The point is that I nor anyone I know who has had cancer and survived (or died) has been part of any comprehensive data collection. I had a good surgeon with Kaiser Permanente who has done breast cancer surgery for years but I did not feel he, Kaiser, or I had enough information to make the best decisions about diagnosis, treatment or vulnerability.
A comprehensive data base is the least we owe Laurie, the 40,000 women who die each year of breast cancer, and our daughters and granddaughters, all of whom are at risk.
mountain grammy
(26,676 posts)Yes, a comprehensive data base is the least we owe to all women.
Time for all of us to get busy with this..
lark
(23,199 posts)As a 2x breast cancer survivor, over the years, friends and family have given me a number of pink ribbons and other items associated with Komen. I've given them all away to Goodwill and asked people not to do that anymore as Komen is anti-women's health and I don't want to represent them in any shape form or fashion. American Cancer Society helped me out so much, I ask people to donate to them in my name instead of purchasing those awful Komen trinkets.
MADem
(135,425 posts)We need people patients, doctors, scientists, politicians, investors, families to make a fresh start. We must create a new system of data collection and an open, online, broad-range database about patient histories that will provide information invaluable to those who've been given a death sentence. Patients as well as doctors must contribute.
She's more polite about Komen than I would have been, but her points are entirely valid.
SunSeeker
(51,811 posts)mountain grammy
(26,676 posts)progressoid
(50,021 posts)Stuart G
(38,458 posts)Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)The wonderful nurse navigator at the cancer center gave me a great travel bag with a notebook for tracking appointments, a book on breast cancer and a small pillow with pink ribbons all over it. When we got in the car, I handed it to my mom and asked her to keep those blasted pink ribbons away from me. Then and now, I don't ever want to see another one. Komen redefines graft. Fuck them.