Gosh, it really is getting to be a busy time of year, aint it?? It only feels like New Year’s Day was yesterday, and here we are already in October. There’s less than two months until Christmas, and I haven’t even started my shopping. What’s more important, I haven’t even started my own wish list! LOL! I need to start jotting down little hints on Post-It Notes, and stick them around my mom’s house. The refrigerator is my favorite spot to drop a hint… my dad is always opening the refrigerator door. He’s actually really silly about the fridge! He’s got this harmless little O.C.D. about refrigerators… no matter if he’s hungry or not, every time my dad is in the kitchen he looks in the fridge. Maybe I’ll start dropping Christmas hints in the lettuce crisper. HAHA! But who am I kidding? My dad would never voluntarily go for the lettuce… I’ll dop my hints on the ice cream in the freezer.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. While Christmas is coming, Thanksgiving is just a month away, and Halloween is at the end of this month. I sooo cannot wait for Halloween this year! I have had my costume planned for months. I’m going as Betsy Ross! 
I have a cute, blue dress, white shirt and red apron for my hips, and I’m going to carry around a partially sewn American Flag. And I really sewed the flag all by myself! Good thing I only had to fashion thirteen stars on that version, which they actually call the “Betsy Ross” flag… embroidering is a major pain in the badonkadonk! LOL!! And just in case you might be thinking about making your own flag, I’ll just tell you now that it’s much easier, and well worth it to just buy a US flag already made and ready to fly on your flag pole.
For the rest of this month, up until Halloween, I’ll be wearing pink every day I can, if not at least a pink lapel pin to symbolize I am recognizing it. I actually keep a pink ribbon magnet on my car year round! That’s because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or NBCAM. Breast cancer is such an important issue today. Well, all health issues are important… they really are… but breast canver is a big one because is affects so many people. It’s the number-one cancer in women, second leading cause of cancer death in women (after lung cancer). And, you might be surprised, but men can get breast cancer, too! I was really taken back when I found that out. It’s not really that common though, at least not as common as it is for women. Only about one percent of breast cancer cases are found in men. Still, though, that’s one percent too many, for anyone. Men or women!
Did you know that breast cancer is also the oldest known form of cancer? The earliest accounts date back to sometime around 1600 BC in Egypt. Back then it was documented that the illness was untreatable. Today that is far from the truth. We’ve come a loooong way with medicine and science since those days, and many forms of breast cancer can be treated and removed. Still, it has affected many throughout history, including the mother of our first United States President.
George Washington’s mom, Mary Washington, lost her life to breast cancer, and the daughter of John Adams, our second United States President, also battled with the disease. She was treated for some time, but medical treatments at the time were far too archaic, and she also eventually died. That was not the last time the disease affected the White House, either. Former First Lady Betty Ford, a breast cancer survivor and one of the first public figures to speak out about the disease, joined her daughter on TV to call attention to the importance of screening. Soon after that, a great wave of recognizable people, and those of influence, jumped onboard to raise awareness and funds to research a cure.
I’m not the first to blog about breast cancer, and i’m surely not going to be the last, either. Everyone needs to know about the devastation of breast cancer – at least I think they do – and everyone should be able to lend a helping hand to look for the cure. The smallest gesture of buying a pink ribbon lapel pin, or affixing a pink ribbon magnet to your car a just a couple of ways you can help. The couple bucks spent on those things help show your support, and maybe someday real soon, a cure will be found, and we won’t have to blog about it anymore. Wouldn’t that be great! YES! It would be WONDERFUL!
I can’t write about all of the things you should know about regarding breast cancer (because this blog would be, like, a million pages long). But if you’re reading this, and you don’t know much about it, I have included a few web pages that you can take a look at:
http://www.breastcancer.org
http://nbcam.org/index.cfm
http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm
Those are just a few of the sites on the web — there are many more, but it’s a real good place to start if you need information. There’s only a few days laft in October, but that doesn’t mean that your activism with breast cancer has to stop at the end of the month. Breast cancer is a year-round problem, and until a cure is found, awareness and education is a year-round mission.
Until next time!
Lexi
