Walking around campus, one may notice more people wearing all shades of pink. It is not a new fashion statement; instead, people are showing their support for National Breast Cancer Awareness month.
In the U.S., one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. In 2010, 39,480 women are expected to die from breast cancer.
Besides skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among U.S. women, according to breastcancer.org.
For 25 years, various organizations have been championing efforts to raise money for research and awareness of the early detection and treatment of breast cancer. This year is no different.
A local breast cancer awareness group, I Love Life, held a 5k race Saturday to help local women who are battling the disease.
For many women, breast cancer is also a mental struggle, which can leave them with feelings of uncertainty and doubt.
“This is such a personal disease,” Chrisitane Dechert, one of the cofounders of I Love Life said.
“I was amazed to find and be accepted into the pink sisterhoods, and those who have been affected, the patients and their families and caretakers, are a special group of people. We have faced how our lives will likely end.”
The I Love Life group has been a champion to many of Laramie’s women and families who have fought the breast cancer battle, offering education and support throughout the difficult time.
“I was thinking of the word ‘journey,’ and the adjective ‘unscripted’ fits it for me,” local breast cancer survivor Ann Marcott said. “From diagnosis on, as a patient, you just don’t know what is written in the future for you. Who could possibly know how the next page in your life would be written? Yet, the page turns and—voilà—you’re still here trying to be strong and continue into the next chapter.”
Because of the support of survivors like Marcott and Dechert, other women have the possibility to remain strong and continue the battle against breast cancer.
“It’s all about the support,” Marcott said. “You meet new people who are in a similar circumstance, and you make connections and … probably life-time friends that connect you and bring you together in this cause. Part of being a survivor, and talking with someone else to help them through it, is a lot of listening. That person who has been affected by this needs to get it off their chest—when they’re ready.”
In an effort to promote early detection, the National Cancer Institute recommends women 40 or older have mammograms every one to two years.
“Breast cancer is a bad thing that happens to good people,” Marcott said.
Marcott is living proof of how effective mammograms are, as she is a woman who was diagnosed at the very rare “stage zero” of cancer.
“We are trying to postpone (the end) as far into the future as we can,” Dechert said. “We have looked death in the eye—what else is there to fear.”